“Why do you ask?” my dad goes. He sits back down.
“Edwin showed me something he was working on,” she finally tells him. “Actually he didn’t show me. It fell out of his backpack. He said it was from a chemistry set that you’d gotten him.”
My dad turns to me. “What’s the deal, Sport?” he asks.
“Are you a scientist at the college?” she asks.
“Economist,” my dad goes. He looks back at me.
“What?” I go.
“What’s she talking about?” he goes.
“I do these stupid drawings,” I go. “They’re just drawings.”
“Did you tell her you have a chemistry set?” he goes.
“Yeah,” I go.
“Why?” my mom goes.
“They’re embarrassing,” I go. Everybody’s looking at me. I can’t tell who believes me. “They’re embarrassing,” I go again.
“So you lied about it?” he goes.
“Yeah,” I go.
My dad looks at Ms. Meier. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he goes. “You’re not going to lie to her anymore,” he says to me. “Right?”
“No,” I go.
She looks at me for a minute and then turns to him and shrugs. “Well, we’ll try and keep an eye on things,” she tells him.
“So will we,” my mom tells her. She stands up and Ms. Meier stands up and they shake hands. “Thanks so much,” my mom goes. “And we’re sorry for all the trouble.”
“Oh, don’t be sorry,” Ms. Meier tells her. “We all want to do everything we can.”
“What do you say?” my dad says to me. We’re all up now and he’s got a hand on my shoulder.
“Good-bye,” I go.
The vice principal laughs.
“What else do you say?” my dad goes.
“Sorry,” I go.
“It’s all right, son,” the vice principal says. He sticks out a hand and I give it a good shake. “Let’s try and see a little less of each other for a while,” he suggests.
“Definitely,” I go. “And thanks again.”
On the way home, my mom thanks me for thanking him. I tell them I’m sorry, and I am. She feels so much better that we have a kind of half-party with just us and Gus when we get home. Gus keeps going “So I get two parties?” while we dish out cake and some of the presents.
“That’s right, hon,” my mom goes. “You get two parties.”
8
“It’s all right to be queer, you know,” Michelle tells Flake and me at lunch the next day. I’m not in the best of moods and neither is he.
“My sister in high school’s in the Lesbian Alliance,” she goes.
“What’re you talking about?” Flake finally brings himself to say. Kids go back and forth past our table. It’s another rainy day and everybody seems worn out by the suckiness of everything.
Lunch is spaghetti and meatballs and the spaghetti’s cold. We’ve already eaten all the meatballs. I got a 40 on my math quiz. I had headaches all morning. A girl in English stared at me the whole period like I was a fingernail she found in her whipped cream.
“I told you,” Tawanda says without looking up from her dish.
“What’d you tell her?” I go.
“I told her not to bring it up,” Tawanda says.
Flake has his elbows on the sides of his tray and his fingers are pushing on his cheeks like they want to get in there.
Everyone calls us queer but they call us everything else, too. It wasn’t like we thought anybody thought we were queer.
“My sister says we have the right to our own bodies,” Michelle says.
Tawanda goes, “Girl, I don’t think they’re liking your helping hand, here.”
“It was hard for my sister, too,” Michelle explains to her. “She says she wishes somebody had talked to her.”
Flake stares at her. She looks back. I feel like resting my head in the spaghetti. I settle for turning over the plate. Most of the sauce and noodles end up still on my tray.
Tawanda passes me a clump of napkins for the stuff that isn’t. “ Somebody should’ve gotten the vegetarian casserole,” she goes.
“You’re sitting here and calling me queer?” Flake finally asks. The way he says it makes me even sadder. They’re the closest things we had in the school to people who didn’t hate us.
“It’s not a judgment thing,” Michelle tells him.
“If I called you a fuckin’ skank, would you say that’s not a judgment thing?” Flake goes.
Michelle doesn’t answer.
“I hurt your feelings?” he goes.
She looks off toward the cafeteria line.
“I hurt her feelings,” he goes to me. “She calls me a fucking queer, and I hurt her feelings.”
“Where’d you get this shit?” I ask her. “Where’d you come up with this?”
“Forget it,” Michelle says. “Forget I said anything.”
“We’re not going to forget it,” Flake goes.
“Flake,” I go.
“Fuck you too,” he goes. “Hey,” he goes to Michelle. He taps her arm. “Jizzbag.”
“Get away from me,” Michelle goes.
“Tell her she’s gotta talk to me,” he says to Tawanda.
“I ain’t getting in the middle of this,” Tawanda says. “I finished my lunch.”
“Tell her she’s gotta talk to me,” he goes again.
“Somebody said bad shit about you, we’d tell you who it was,” I go to Tawanda.
She thinks about it and she knows I’m right. “Maybe we should tell them,” she goes to Michelle.
Michelle’s slurping from her milk pint. She’s looking at it like it disappoints her. “I was just trying to help,” she says. She’s pissed off but looks embarrassed, too. When she’s sitting she always takes her sandals off and turns them around with her toes and then puts her feet back on top of them.
“Who told you we were queer?” Flake goes. He’s keeping his voice down but that’s about it.
“Matthew Sfikas,” Michelle finally says. “Him and another kid.”
“Who the fuck is Matthew Sfikas?” Flake goes. You can hear him thinking; I don’t even know these people.
“Oh, shit,” I go. “He’s that ninth-grader I had detention with.”
“What’s his fucking damage?” Flake goes. “Why’s he doing this?”
“He said he saw you guys,” Michelle goes. “That’s the only reason I believed him.”
“I told the monitor he was playing with himself,” I go to Flake. “He’s getting even.”
“What did he say he saw us doing?” Flake goes. His voice is a little high. I’m getting as worried as the girls are.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Michelle says.
Flake looks around like he’s trying to find something to use on somebody. “Who is he?” he goes to me. “Point him out.”
“He’s not here right now,” I go. I make like I’m looking and can see he’s not here. He doesn’t say a word from there on, and neither does Michelle.
“Nice dining with you all,” Tawanda says when we get up from the table. Nobody answers.
“Isn’t your class that way?” I go to Flake as we head down the hall.
He shoulders into a ninth-grader and the kid just gapes at him. “I’m not going to class,” he goes. Then he turns a corner and the bell rings.
He gets detention for having spent fifth and sixth periods wandering around the school looking for Matthew Sfikas. He did his looking by peeking into ninth-grade classrooms one by one. Finally a teacher noticed and went out into the hall.
“You don’t even know what he looks like,” I tell him in the detention room. He’s alone and there’s one kid waiting outside the door for the monitor to show up. I only have a minute before the buses leave.