Matt’s head bobs. The kid is low-key cool, but getting him to say much is tough. He’s also hot, in a my-type-of-way, but I’ve gotten good at ignoring when guys are hot, since everyone at this school is so aggressively heterosexual.
According to an article I read, three or four percent of people are gay, lesbian, or bi. Wherever they dredged up that statistic, it wasn’t Paloma High School. Twelve hundred kids, and I haven’t met a single other queer person. Definitely no Gay-Straight Alliance Club here.
Sometimes I feel like we should have a club for all minority populations, since this place has all the ethnic diversity of your average mayonnaise jar. The culture shock was real at first, moving here, where everyone’s the same shade of white and the same subgenre of Methodist.
Matt opens his back door and leans into his car, his shoulder blades pitching tents in the back of his hoodie. His voice is muffled as he rummages through the mess in his backseat. “Hey, are you selling today?”
“Yeah, hit me up after school.”
“Sweet.” He shoulders his backpack and shuts the door. “It’s a date.”
Something goes still in the center of my chest. I stay quiet as Matt pulls a beanie over his head. His eyes are light brown and guarded, and I can’t help but wonder.
A date?
An impulse hits me. Maybe it’s the adrenaline still zipping over my skin, or maybe it’s the smell of cold air conjuring the feeling of someone’s hand in mine. Winter of eighth grade was the first time I ever held a guy’s hand, and chilly afternoons remind me of it every so often: Caleb’s warm, uncertain grip.
“Hey, Matt,” I say. “You maybe want to get coffee sometime? Or dinner or something?”
His expression freezes. If it were a computer screen, it would read: 404 error. Unable to process request. “I . . . what?” he says.
Bad guess. Crap. Say something, Lucas.
“Nothing, never mind,” I blurt out. The least convincing three words ever spoken.
Matt, of course, because he is not a moron, doesn’t buy it for a second. He stares at me as if I’m a poisonous snake that’s tried to strike up friendly conversation. “Weren’t you straight, like, six months ago?”
A gust of wind scurries through the parking lot. I watch it toy with the heavy leather laces of my Sperry Top-Siders. I shouldn’t have said anything.
Nobody cared at Pinnacle, home to yuppie liberals galore. My friend Alicia used to kiss her girlfriend in the stairwell, and they were only thirteen, and nobody cared. Paloma High, though, is different. On the swim team, if you make a one-word complaint about a workout, you get told to “suck it up, fag.” After a hard test, people whine, “That was gay as shit.” And when my teammates compliment one another, they follow up with “no homo.” (They do this every time, as if people might’ve forgotten from the last time that they’re not a homo.) I’ve never seen anyone getting crucified for actually being queer, but that’s just one step up from, “Suck it up, fag.” So I’ve stayed quiet.
I should say “no homo,” pretend I was kidding, but I can’t get the words out. They taste bitter sitting on my tongue.
Matt still looks startled. “I thought you dated that Claire chick forever.”
“I did.”
“So?” he says.
I shrug. “So . . . what?”
“So how does that work if you’re gay?”
“I’m not gay.”
He looks baffled. “You just asked me out, dude.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not gay. It’s—”
The warning bell blares, saving me the explanation. Matt hoists his backpack higher on his shoulder and gives up. “Okay, whatever. After school? Weed? We good?”
“Sure,” I say. “And, um, Matt?”
“What?”
“Would you . . . don’t say anything, all right?”
He shrugs. “Yeah, no.”
He walks off, leaving me uneasy but relieved to see him go. I hate the What is a pansexual? conversation. It means explaining the same thing I’ve explained so many times before to every cousin, aunt, and uncle in our address book. I’ll come out a million times before I’m dead, and I’m already bored of it.
To be fair, though, the What is a pansexual? conversation is a million times better than the That doesn’t sound real conversation. Uncle Jeremy still stands by his claim that my sexuality is imaginary. Nice to know I don’t exist.
Mostly, though, I’m lucky in the family department, since my parents are the type of Christians who don’t stick too close to Leviticus. My dad still wants me to settle down with a girl, but he’s stopped saying it out loud, at least.
The seed of the secret being out in the Paloma world worries me. I want to snatch it back, put it deep in my pocket. Never talk about it again.