Boy Meets Boy

Tony hesitated for a moment, unsure. Then he smiled.

“Yeah, he was cute.” As if he was revealing his deepest secret.

Which, in many ways, he was.

We kept talking. And maybe it was because we were strangers, or maybe it was because we had bought the same book and had thought the same boy was cute. But it was very easy to talk. Riding the train is all about moving forward; our conversation moved like it was on tracks, with no worry of traffic or direction. He told me about his school, which was not like my school, and his parents, who were not like my parents. He didn’t use the word gay and I didn’t need him to. It was understood. This clandestine trip was secret and special to him. He had told his parents he was going on a church retreat. Then he’d hopped on a train to visit the open doors of the open city.

Now the city lights ebbed in their grip over the landscape. The meadowlands waved in the darkness until the smaller cities appeared, then the houses with yards and plastic pools. We had talked our way home, one town apart.

I asked him for his phone number, but he gave me an e-mail address instead. It was safer that way for him. I told him to call me any time and we made our next set of plans. In other circumstances, this would have been the start of a romance. But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself.

“Diltaunt aprin zesperado?” Tony asks me now, seeing me lost in thought.

“Gastemicama,” I answer decisively.

I’mgood.

It’s hard for me to concentrate on Tony’s homework, with so many things to think about. Somehow I manage to write three pages before my brother comes downstairs and offers to give Tony a ride home. Of all my friends, Jay likes Tony best. I think they have compatible silences. I can imagine them on the way back to Tony’s, not saying a word. Jay respects Tony, and I respect Jay for that.

I already know that Tony won’t give me any advice about what to do with Noah or Joni or Kyle. It’s not that he doesn’t care (I’m sure he does). He just likes people to do their own thing.

“Lifstat beyune hegra,” he says when departing. But his tone holds no clues. Goodbye? Good luck? Call Noah?

I don’t know.

“Yaroun,” I reply.

Goodbye. See you tomorrow.

I head back to my room and finish my homework. I don’t look over what Tony’s already written. I’m sure it’s fine.

I spend the rest of the evening in a television daze. For the first time in a long time, I don’t call Joni. And Joni doesn’t call me.

This is how I know she knows I know.

Dangling Conversations (#ulink_a2a159bd-ed7c-505e-9739-e4e460b7fde1)

The next morning, I look for Noah and find Joni instead.

“We’ve got to talk,” she says. I do not argue.

She pulls me into an empty classroom. History’s great figures – Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Homer Simpson – look down at us from posters on the walls.

“You saw us. Ted saw us.”

It isn’t a question, so I don’t have to answer.

“What’s going on?” I ask instead. Implied in that question is the bigger one: Why didn’t you tell me?

“I wasn’t expecting this to happen.”

“Which part? Falling for Chuck, or having to admit it?”

“Don’t get hostile.”

I sigh. Early signs of defensiveness are not good.

“Look,” I say, “you know as well as I do what Chuck did after Infinite Darlene rejected him. He trashed her locker and bad-mouthed her to the whole school.”

“He was hurt.”

“He was psycho, Joni.” (I don’t mean to say that; it just comes out. A Friendian Slip.)

Joni shoots me the look I know so well – the same look she shot me when she dyed her hair red in sixth grade and I unsuccessfully tried to pretend it had come out well; the same look she shot me when I tried to convince her (after the first break-up) that getting back together with Ted wasn’t the best idea; the same look she shot me when I confessed to her that I was worried I’d never, ever find a boyfriend who loved me the same way I loved him. It’s a look that stops all conversation. It’s a look that insists, You’re wrong.

We’ve been best friends too long to fight each other over this. We both know that.

“So have you talked to Ted?” I ask.

“I wanted to talk to you first.”

I think she’s doing the wrong thing. My intuition is clear on this: Chuck is bad news. But I know there’s nothing I can do to convince her to change her mind. Not without proof.

“So are you, like, Chuck’s girlfriend now?”

Joni groans. “Remains to be seen, OK? And how are you doing with your Mystery Boy?”

“I have to find him again.”

“You lost him?”

“Suppose so.”

I say goodbye to Joni and head to Noah’s locker. I see Infinite Darlene and duck past her – I’m sure by now she’s heard about Joni and Chuck, and I’m sure she’ll have loads to say about it.

I also pass Seven and Eight in the halls, their heads leaned gently into each other, their words impossible to overhear. Their real names are Steven and Kate, but no one has called them that for years. They started going out in second grade and haven’t been apart since. They are the one per cent of one per cent who meet early on and never need to find anybody else. There’s no way to explain it.

Noah is waiting by his locker. No – let me change that. He is standing by his locker. There is no sign in his posture or in his gaze that he is waiting for anybody.

“Hey,” I say. I scan his features for a reaction. Surprise? Happiness? Anger?

I can’t read him.

“Hey,” he says back, closing his locker.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I continue. “Did you get my note?”

He shakes his head. I’m a little thrown.