Come Sit By Me (13 page)

WORD TRAVELS
FAST
, at least in a small town like Hamilton. By the time I got to school on Monday, the word was that I was gay. Somebody whistled at me when I was parking my car. I didn't quite get it. Then when I got to my locker, I found that somebody else had written GAY on the door with a marker. I rubbed my thumb across the word, smearing it slightly. Well, the locker was famous for somebody else besides Caleb now.

When I walked into my first class, world lit, everybody looked at me and then looked away. Except Terry, who motioned for me to come over and sit by her. “North told some people you were gay,” she whispered.

“I'll tell you about it later,” I said as Ms. Hayward entered the room.

It was pretty much the same all morning. I was finding out what it was like to be an outsider—which I was anyway, I told myself.

At lunch it got a little worse. When I came off the tray line, a guy at North's table got up and mooned me. Actually dropped his trou and gave me a full moon. At lunch! A lot of people laughed too. Whoever was supposed to be monitoring the lunchroom did a pretty crappy job of it.

After I sat down at an empty table, I saw Seese going by and tried to catch his eye. He glanced at me and hurried away. I had a pretty bad virus, all right. Just like Caleb.

Terry finally showed up and sat across from me. “You know why North says you're gay?” she said in a voice that indicated she was about to tell me.

“I have a pretty good idea,” I said.

“He tried to fix you up with Vicky Barker and you wouldn't go.”

I nodded. That was the mild version. I saw no reason to give Terry the details. I'd probably have to explain what a beej was. Maybe not.

“Why wouldn't you?” Terry asked.

I sort of felt like she was being a little too nosy. “She's not my type,” I said.

Terry laughed out loud, and some people at the next table looked at us. “North thought he was doing you a favor,” she said. “Vicky isn't exactly known as the morality queen of Hamilton.”

“Or a bribe,” I shot back.

“A bribe?” She was interested. “A bribe to do what?”

I had to be careful. I didn't want to tell her what I'd found or she'd want to read it. “To be his friend,” I said.

She looked at me strangely. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I'm just fine,” I said.

“And I assume you're not really gay.”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“You know how you can tell?” she said. Fortunately, she was off on a different topic. One that interested her more than what I was getting bribed for.

I was a little afraid of what the answer to her question might be, but I shrugged and said, “No. How?”

She leaned forward. “What do you think about when you masturbate?”

I leaned backward, my hands up as if to keep her away. I had never talked to a girl about masturbation before—ever. In fact, aside from a brief conversation with two guys in eighth grade about whether you could harm yourself, I never talked about it with anybody.

When I didn't answer, she looked concerned. “It's not boys, is it?”

“No!” I told her, maybe too forcefully.

“Girls, then?” she said encouragingly.

I could feel my face get hot. “Yes, girls.”

“So you're not gay,” she said.

Problem solved.

Except that I couldn't go around to everybody else in the school and explain that I thought about girls when I masturbated.

And when I went out to my car after school, somebody had sprayed GAY on the windshield with what looked like shaving cream. Or whipped cream, maybe swiped from the cafeteria.

Fortunately, the windshield washer in the car took most of it off.

Unfortunately, not before Susan saw it.

“What's
that
?” she said, pointing.

“Nothing,” I told her. “See, I'm washing it off.”

“But what's it mean?”

“Gay. Well, you know, happy, singing all the time.”

“Don't act dumb. I know what it means. It means you're in love with a boy.”

“I'm surprised you hadn't heard that already,” I said. “Don't you know everything that goes on in the school?”

“Who is he?” she asked, suddenly curious.

“Nobody!” I yelled. “I'm not in love with anybody.”

“But if you were…” she began.

“Just shut up,” I explained.

Telling your little sister to shut up is like telling the ocean to stop making waves. She asked questions all the way home. I answered none of them, so by the time I turned off the car, she was already inside the house, crying and telling Dad that she couldn't go back to that school.

“Why not?” he asked. He was watching Oprah. Usually we don't disturb him when he's watching Oprah.

“Because everybody will make fun of me because my brother is gay,” Susan said.

Dad looked at me, blinking his eyes. “You're gay?” he said.

“No,” I told him. “Somebody's just trying to get at me.”

He cleared his throat. I could see he was going to make a speech. One of those stock speeches he had prepared for different occasions.

“Because being gay is nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “It's perfectly normal. By some estimates, at least ten percent of American males are gay. Let's see, there are about 300 kids in your school, and assuming half of them are boys, that would mean at least fifteen are gay. So you're not alone.”

“Dad,” I told him. “I don't need you to be understanding about this.”

“Well, I want you to know that we love you no matter what.”

“Then you'll be glad to hear that I'm not really gay.”

He nodded encouragingly. “But if you change your mind, you know you can always discuss anything with me.”

Susan wailed.

I closed the door to my room and lay down on the bed. Maybe in some schools there are fifteen gay kids, but it was extremely doubtful that Hamilton was one of them. In my old school in New York, that would have been true, but not here. Or if there were, the others were firmly in the closet. With the door locked.

Because they didn't want to be in the position I was in. Of being the object of contempt every day I went to school.

So I could spend the rest of the year denying that I was gay. I should concentrate on taking the SATs and getting out of Hamilton forever. Almost eight months away. Maybe some tough guys would try to beat me up to show they weren't gay. Colleen would certainly not want to go out with me. My own sister would hate me.

Or I could cut off the story at its source.

I thought about what would be the most effective message. Then I sat down at my computer and wrote an email to Patrot0000.

My message was: “Unless you tell people I'm not gay, I'll tell them who bought Caleb guns.”

I didn't sign it. He would know.

He didn't respond that evening. I guess he was trying to decide if he could deny everything and just say I was making it up.

Nothing in my e-mails the next morning either. Maybe he'd just ignore me.

But no. At school everything went pretty much as normal until I got to my math class. I sat by myself, but then North came over and sat in the desk next to me. He put out his hand for a high-five. I was so startled I almost didn't respond. But then I high-fived him. He had a big smile on his face. I could feel the room relax. Everybody looked at me again, but in a totally different way from yesterday.

I was in again. A straight arrow. A good guy, like them.

Like North.

I EVEN
GOT TO SIT
at the table with the jocks at lunch. Everything was fine. Girls smiled at me. Guys didn't hide from me in the locker room. Life was back to normal.

Except it wasn't. North now knew that I knew. And I knew he knew that I…well, you get it. There was something unspoken in the air. And it wasn't going to go away.

The football team played an away game on Friday, at a town called Susquehanna. A few busloads of students were going along to cheer. Some other kids were driving up. On Thursday, North asked me if I was going. I said I didn't think so.

“We might actually win this one,” he said with a big grin. “And the girls get into a really good mood if we do.”

I hesitated. No sense reinforcing the idea that I didn't like girls. “Cool. I'll see if I can make it,” I said.

He nodded and then added, “You know, you and I ought to go hunting again sometime. It's deer season now.”

“Is that right?” I pretended to be interested, though a voice inside of me was warning:
Be careful
.

“Didja ever eat venison?” he asked.

“No, not really. Does it taste like turkey?”

He laughed, knowing a joke when he heard one. “It tastes like what real men eat.” Then he added. “What about this weekend?” I could see he was trying to be casual about it. “We'll get our deer before the other hunters chase them all away.”

“I guess so,” I said. I don't know why, but I felt like I needed to get this over with.

“Sunday then,” he said. “I'll pick you up at noon.”

“Not Saturday?” I said.

He winked. “Maybe we'll be worn out on Saturday.” He nudged me, and I gave him a big grin.

When I got home I phoned Terry and asked her if she was planning to go to the game Friday night.

“Of course not,” she said. “I'm going to be working on my social studies paper.”

“That's not due until next Friday.”

“If you want to do a good job, you have to allow time,” she said.

“Don't you ever take any time off?”

“Of course, but not for something as lame as a football game.”

“What if I took you to Peacefoods afterward?”

There was a brief silence. “Is this a date?”

“Well, kind of,” I said. “Not a date date. Sort of a research date.”

“What are we going to research? Sex?”

I wasn't sure if she was kidding. “No, just the social habits of high school students.”

“You could research that without me.”

I took a deep breath. “Look. I have to go because North wants me to, and I don't want to get on his bad side. But I don't want him fixing me up with one of his…harem, or whatever it is.”

More silence. “Maybe you
are
gay,” she suggested.

“Look, do you want to go or not?” I said.

“All right,” she replied. “Just because I want to see how you do research.”

One thing worried me: North liked my car because it had a back seat that he could use. Suppose he decided that it didn't matter who I sat with in the front, as long as he could stretch out with his girl du jour in the back? I wondered what Terry's reaction would be.

Fortunately, she solved that problem. When I arrived to pick her up, she said, “Look, I hope this doesn't destroy your ego or anything, but my car is a lot nicer than yours. If you pay for the gas, I'll drive.”

“Fantastic,” I said.

“Besides, if you decide to go somewhere with North and his friends, I can still get myself home.”

“Not going to happen,” I said.

At the game, I could tell that Terry was actually having a good time. She knew everybody from Hamilton, and several of the girls—the non-North type—came over to chat with her. From the way they looked at me, it was clear they thought this was a real date, and they were forming opinions (of me) that they would share with Terry later.

As for the game, the outcome made everybody on our side happy. Susquehanna's team was pretty bad, and North was at his best. He threw for three touchdowns and ran for another. Meanwhile, our defense pulled itself together and even intercepted the Susquehanna quarterback twice. We won 37-27, and North got carried off the field. Probably the high point of his life. Unless you counted the day of the shootings.

“That was more exciting than I expected,” Terry said.

“You want to go again next week?” I suggested.

“Just more of the same, I assume,” she said. “Once is enough.”

North appeared, still in his uniform. You could smell the sweat coming off him. He sort of looked us over the way Terry's friends had, forming his own opinion (of her, not me). “Did you bring your car?” he asked me.

“Terry drove,” I said.

He shrugged and slapped me on the back. “Don't get whipped, man,” he said. “I'll see you Sunday.”

“Right,” I said.

On the way back, Terry said, “If your purpose was to pretend you had a girlfriend, I guess you succeeded.” For some reason, she seemed pissed off.

“I just didn't want to get any more involved with North than necessary.”

“Really? What was that about Sunday?”

“We're going hunting.”

She raised an eyebrow, but let it pass. “Where did you learn to hunt?”

“He's teaching me.”

“There's something going on here that you're not telling me, isn't there?” she said.

I didn't say anything. Terry would make a good reporter, if that's what she decided to do.

“And it has something to do with Cale, doesn't it?” she went on.

“He and North never hung out together, did they?” I asked.

She didn't reply at first, which surprised me. I looked at her and she said slowly, “I saw something once that made me wonder.”

“What?” I asked.

“It was nothing, really,” she said, waving her hand. “Did you find some connection between them?”

I kind of made noises as if I was thinking about forming a sentence, but didn't answer her question.

“If you did,” Terry said, “you should be very careful not to let North know.”

I nodded. I didn't tell her I had already let him know.

We stopped at Peacefoods, where the same waitress, Opal, took our order. Terry talked about the latest book we were reading in world lit. I was only partly paying attention, because I was thinking about what she had said. I picked up the check and paid it, and Opal gave a little nod to Terry. The secret girl's nod that means, “Good, you've got him paying for dinner.”

Terry drove back to her house, where my car was still parked. We got out and walked over to it. I said, “Well, I hope you had a good time.” Then she leaned forward and kissed me. It wasn't a Colleen suck-everything-out-of-you kiss, but it wasn't sisterly either. I hadn't been expecting it, and by the time I recovered, she was on her way up the front steps. “I did,” I heard her say.

Something more to think about. I could hardly sleep all night, between Terry's kiss and what North was going to say or do on Sunday. All day Saturday I was tired. I thought about how North might have spent his Friday night after the game.

Dad noticed my mood and tried to cheer me up. You know how you hate that when your parents do it? If I wanted to be miserable, let me. He turned on a college football game. Wouldn't you know, his school, Wisconsin, was playing. He follows all that stuff, still knows who's playing for them every year. I wondered what he'd think if I told him what was really going on in my life.

He ordered pizza for dinner. I ate too many pieces and that made me even sleepier. I went to bed early, but I dreamed about Caleb. He had taken a rifle out of his locker and was heading for the library. Everybody else was in class, so the hallway was empty. Then I realized that I couldn't see Caleb. I was looking at the whole thing through his eyes. I was Caleb.

I woke up with a yell. I sat there in the dark, wondering if anybody had heard me. In the city, in the building where we used to live, there would be noises all night. People running water, using the elevator, even yelling at each other from time to time. And outside, sirens, trucks, cars… Here, there wasn't any sound at all. Nobody was awake. Except me. For some reason, I thought of the people in the cemetery. The dead ones.

I couldn't sleep after that. I kept worrying that I'd turn into Caleb again.

I got up before anybody else and made some breakfast. Dad came down a little later and said, “Feeling better today?”

I just nodded.

“What are you planning?” he asked.

“I'm going hunting with North again,” I told him.“Well, don't bring home any turkeys,” he said with a laugh. “We don't have a cook that can clean them.” I had told him about shooting the turkeys with North before.

“I won't,” I said.

“The hunter,” he said, pretending to be impressed.

It crossed my mind that I should tell him not to be surprised if I didn't come back. I stood at the door and actually thought about it. But that would only lead to a lot more questions that I didn't want to answer.

North was on time. He pulled up in front of the house and dialed my cell to let me know he was there. I told my dad I was leaving and put on a heavy jacket. According to my computer screen, the temperature outside was in the low thirties. My breath made mist in the air.

When I got into North's truck, he gave me a big smile and said, “All recovered from Friday night?”

I tried to remember Friday night, and he added, “That little redhead put out for ya?”

“Somewhat,” I said. North wouldn't have called Terry's kiss “putting out,” but I had liked it. I just didn't have time to think about what it meant, and where we might be going.

I wasn't sure I was going anywhere. I had North to get past first.

On the way, he described in graphic detail how he had spent Friday night, which involved two girls and a lot of acrobatics and fluids. “You could have had some of that,” he told me.

I had no argument there.

North parked the truck at the same place we had hunted before. No other vehicles in sight. He took down one of the two shotguns from the rack and loaded it with some shells that were in a box on the front seat. “Come on,” he said, getting out.

I could either follow or sit in the truck. I took down the other shotgun, the pump-action one I had used before. I had seen how North loaded it the last time, and I managed to slip a shell from the box into it. I didn't think I'd really need more than one. I pumped it into the chamber.

We started walking into the woods. The fallen leaves had all dried by now, and they crunched under our feet. It crossed my mind that if we were hunting for deer, the noise we made would scare them away.

“So you found it,” North said finally.

“Found what?” I replied.

“You know,” he said. “Where was it, anyway?'

I didn't answer right away, but then I thought,
What's the point of playing games?
“It was in the angel's book in the cemetery.”

“Never thought of that,” he admitted. “He had that crypt up his butt so much that I figured he must have put it there.”

“You were the one who broke into the crypt?” I said.

“I tried to pry it open with a crowbar, and the cement just broke,” he said. “Otherwise nobody would have known.”

“But if it was in there, why not just leave it alone?” I asked. “Nobody would have found it.”

“Couldn't take that chance,” he said. “I didn't know what was on it. Where is it now?”

“In a safe place,” I assured him.

“No place is safe,” he replied. “It's got to be destroyed. It's a detail. The Colonel says the devil is in the details. If you overlook a detail, the mission is compromised.”

I let this sink in for a while. “And what is the mission?” I finally asked.

He gave me a glance. “To get into the Point.”

I reminded myself that even though Caleb had been crazy, he'd been pushed in that direction by North. I hadn't thought North himself was crazy, but I could be wrong.

“How did getting Caleb to kill people help to get you into the Point?” I asked.

“The plan didn't go exactly as intended,” North said. “I knew he was weak, in mind and spirit, and that I could lead him by taking advantage of the fact that he hated that girl.” He looked at me and added, “He wanted to kill her before I started to show him how to do it.”

North spoke as if it really wasn't his fault. But then his voice changed, and so did the expression on his face. He looked satisfied. “But then,” he told me, “he got into a fight with someone I hated.”

“Marcus,” I said.

North nodded. “The coach was grooming him to be quarterback the next year. That would mean I'd be second string QB or have to play a different position.”

“You did this because you wanted to be the quarterback for a high school football team?” I felt ridiculous even saying it.

“The Point takes leadership qualities into account,” he replied. “Quarterback is the leadership position, more than in any other sport.”

Perfectly reasonable. If you want to be quarterback, just blow away your competition.

“I hadn't intended for things to go as far as they did,” he admitted.

“You didn't? You bought Caleb guns, showed him how to shoot them. What did you think would happen?”

“I planned to stop him,” North said.

I shook my head. “That makes no sense,” I said.

“Yes, it does when you think about it,” he replied. I looked at his face. He wasn't kidding.

“You have to understand that I always kept the option of stopping him,” North said.

“You started him and then planned to stop him?” I asked.

North nodded approvingly. I was a slow pupil, he seemed to indicate, but I showed promise.