7

 Mystics

 Table-tipping (See also: Séance)

 Why people put statues of angels on their lawn

Over the weekend, Tesla had soccer games back-to-back, so I had the house to myself. I spent my freedom watching online documentaries about American mystics and people who can talk to the dead.

One mystic used little plastic dolls to communicate with the spirits. Like the kind of dolls I would imagine grandmas collecting. With little painted faces and frozen china hands.

The dead are very forgiving and are never sad about being dead. Apparently that’s something built into the system so that no one feels ripped off in the afterlife.

A couple of the mystics talked about Jesus a lot. About how Jesus was at work in the world of the living and the dead, shepherding people into heaven. Like Jesus was some kind of maître d’ for heaven. If he’s so important, I wondered, why is he working the door?

These people have no logic.

There was this part in one documentary where all the mystics put their hands on the table and it danced around. It’s called table-tipping.

Interesting, I thought.

At one point, on my way to grab a slice at Tony’s Pizza Pie around the block, I took the stone out to a crosswalk to see if I could affect when the lights changed, which is something this guy I found online said he could do with just his brain (which is part alien). Hard to say if it was working; people kept pressing the buttons, so it could have been them.

Naoki spent the weekend at a weaving seminar, sending me pictures every so often of layers of pink and blue and yellow threads. Thomas spent the weekend binge watching eighties romantic comedies, which apparently he can only do alone.

By Monday, I was kind of sick of just being by myself.

That morning, I came downstairs, and Tesla was sitting at the breakfast table in a sparkly pink leotard and tutu, next to a bowl of what looked like black spiderwebs.

I thumped down on my seat and pushed the bowl with my finger. “What’s that?”

“Don’t,” Tesla huffed. “It’s my hair stuff. Mama’s putting my hair up in a fairy bun.”

I had a flash of High Bun, her phone held out.

CLICK.

“Why a bun?”

“Because it’s Halloween? Duh? And I’m a fairy.”

Halloween? I poured myself a giant bowl of cereal and scanned the table for sugar. How did Halloween sneak up on me? Weird.

I looked over at Tesla, suddenly noticing that her hair was already sprayed and pinned into place. “Fairies have buns?”

Also weird:

 Kids’ obsession with fairies

To be clear, every year, for Halloween, Tesla dresses up as a fairy, which, every year, involves some specific fairy thing that I’ve never heard of. When she was eight, it meant she had to have ballet slippers. Last year, when she was ten, she asked to be a “sexy fairy,” and my parents asked her to explain what a sexy fairy would look like.

She drew a picture.

Sexy fairy had a bra over her outfit.

“No sexy fairy,” Momma Jo said. “You’re a ten-year-old fairy. A ten-year-old fairy doesn’t need a bra.”

Neither does an eleven-year-old fairy, apparently.

Every year since this fairy stuff started I take the opportunity to explain to her what fairies were really like, and it bugs the crap out of her.

I leaned over my bowl and pointed at Tesla with my spoon. “Did I ever tell you that fairies actually looked ugly and mean?”

Tesla crossed her arms over her fairy chest. “No, they weren’t.”

“Some people thought they were an omen of death!”

“Shut up, Monty.”

Unperturbed, I munched on my cereal. “Are you an omen of death, Tesla?”

It’s true they were. Not always, but sometimes. Fairies, in the original stories about fairies, weren’t these wishy-washy, wistful wish granters in tutus, like they are in kids’ books today. They were mean, vengeful. Sometimes because they were cast out of their villages, sent to the woods without supper. In the first stories about fairies, they used their magic to disguise themselves. To do bad things. They were mess-you-uppers, enchanters.

 Omens

 Enchantments

And by enchant, we’re not talking about a sprinkle of fairy dust so you can fly. We’re talking you will obey me–type stuff. Give me your wife–type stuff.

There is actually a support group in Daytona for people who have been attacked by fairies. It has a very grim website. It also has a 1-800 number, which I have often considered calling.

It’s funny, though, right, that a word like enchanting sounds so nice, like a really nice afternoon, like something special, but really, it’s also a spell.

A trick.

None of which Tesla wanted to hear as Mama Kate continued to pin her hair into the toughest bun in California, but I made a mental note to mention it to Naoki because it sounded like a Naoki sort of thing. Enchanted.

In the car on the way to school I got a text from Naoki.

Naoki: Old Man Tree lunch OK?

Me: Working on Outsiders deco with T. After school?

Naoki: Just need a minute. OM at 12:30?

Thomas came to school in drag, which he takes the Halloween option to do sometimes. Over the years, Thomas has shown a preference for queens: Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen of Hearts. This Halloween he was the evil queen from Snow White, in a purple dress and cape, a black wig, a crown I think he actually welded himself, and a big, real red apple, which he would hold up when people wanted to take pictures.

Queen or not, from the moment the lunch bell rang, Thomas was full-tilt working on sets, his skirts hitched up, an old-timey-looking apron tied around his waist, and a paintbrush in each hand as he slaved to make a realistic movable set of trees and classic cars for the upcoming production of The Outsiders. Mr. Gyle, true to his word, had hired a “choreographer” to help students with the fight scenes. Of which there were many. The choreographer showed up in a Raiders sweatshirt, hat, and jogging pants. He wore bright green sneakers. He looked like a football coach. And talked like a football coach.

I’m pretty sure he was a football coach.

Thomas said he overheard him saying stuff like “Hut hut hut” instead of, say, “Action.”

I was a few minutes into my volunteered lunch hour spent sitting in a plastic chair with a metal brush and sewing scissors, distressing jeans for the “actors,” before Thomas told me who I was distressing for.

The actor taking the lead role in Hinton’s formidable tale of adolescent struggle? MATT TRUIT.

“What?!” “When did they post it?”

“Friday,” Thomas said, stirring a can of classic-car crimson. “He was really the best of the bunch.”

“Are you serious?!”

Matt Truit? Really? How much injustice should one person have to endure?

How is it possible that someone who makes a sport of making fun of something then gets to benefit from its existence?

I’d heard a rumor in the girls’ bathroom that Kenneth White had auditioned, too, but Thomas said it wasn’t true. He said Kenneth showed up and sat in the back of the theater, but then, when they tried to talk to him, he just left.

“What’s worse?” I sighed, tossing my newly—Matt’s newly—distressed jeans on the floor.

“It’s not so bad,” Thomas said, bending over to pick them up.

“Pfft is all I have to say to that.”

“While you’re pffting you can put these on a hanger and onto the costume rack, please,” Thomas said, holding out the pants.

“Fine. I bet Kenneth didn’t audition because it’s such a disgusting, sinful play,” I chortled. “Poor Kenneth with all this sin everywhere.”

I hung up Matt’s pants and grabbed the undistressed pair next in line. It was harder to do now that I knew I was distressing jeans for jerkoffs.

Thomas turned back to his can of crimson. “He looks a little like the older-brother character to me.”

How was it Thomas could stay so relaxed around people being crazy homophobes all the time? He dipped his brush into the new bucket of paint and brushed a stroke onto the door of a massive wooden car.

I tore into my new set of pants with the iron brush. “Did I tell you he corrected me in chemistry today?”

Thomas didn’t look up. “Matt?”

“Kenneth.”

Basically, I was in chemistry and I’d said something about hydrogen in class, and Kenneth had chuckled.

Chuckled. Actually jiggled in his seat. Like, he went from nothing to chuckle. It wasn’t even that funny.

He didn’t turn around. He’d just said, “I’m pretty sure you mean oxygen.”

“Okay, well, in other news, the play is cast—hurrah,” Thomas said, moving from the car to the stack of trees in the corner of the room. “You know, now that I’ve had a closer look, Matt’s not a bad-looking guy. I can see what you saw in him.”

I looked down at the jeans. I’d been scrubbing them so hard I’d almost torn them in half. “Whatever. I’ve got to go. I told Naoki I’d meet her by the Old Man.”

“Don’t forget your cat ears,” Thomas called, pointing at my fuzzy ears with his free hand as he dragged a stack of trees onto the stage.

As I wandered outside to the courtyard in front of the school I noted that I was one of about twenty cats, a cat being the go-to minimalist costume choice. Only about half the kids at school had bothered to dress up. By the time you get to high school, no one’s really trick-or-treating, so it’s mostly a matter of who actually likes to dress up for their own interest. Mostly it’s nerds, who will take on any excuse to dress up like their favorite action heroes or creatures.

There were a lot of Gandalfs wandering around.

 Boys’ obsession with wizards

There are four trees in the quad next to Jefferson High. One looks like a spaceship hovering on top of a pencil, which is where the teachers sit when they have lunch. One looks like an Afro, which is where people usually go to make out because it’s the most tucked to the side. There’s the super big pointy-at-the-top tree that popular people eat lunch under because it’s supposedly the nicest. And there’s Old Man tree, all bent over and crooked and knobbly, where the nerds eat because it’s closest to the school and the Wi-Fi signal they hack into is better there, even though the ground is a little rockier.

Naoki was waiting for me under the tree, dressed in blue and gray and green, with little bits of things pinned to her. Leaves. Twigs. Moss.

“I’m a river,” she explained.

“Cool.” Of course, because I had like a zillion things I wanted to tell Naoki, about the Eye, the incantation, about Tesla’s soccer game, I was suddenly struck completely dumb. Wasn’t there a word I was going to ask her about? “Cool,” I said again for no reason.

Naoki smiled. “Okay, good,” she said, as though I’d just said something that could be described as “good.” “So, I have a question to ask you,” she continued, “about Mystery Club. And our membership. I want to suggest a new member.”

“Who?”

“He’s new. And I haven’t asked him, but I think we should,” Naoki added.

“Okaaay.”

There was a shriek on the other side of the school. The sun poured down between the branches and set a warm spot on the top of my head.

Naoki grabbed a lock of hair, twisted it artfully into a loop.

“Okay, so first I’m going to say it, then I’m going to explain. Okay. I think we should ask Kenneth White to join Mystery Club.”

“What?!”

The crowd of nerds, gathered several feet away for a few impromptu rounds of Magic, cringed.

Naoki put her hands out, palms up, like an offering. “Right, so I’ll explain. Remember last week, with the crosses? Of course you remember. Okay, on that day, I started thinking about the word cross. About being ‘cross’ as in ‘angry,’ about the shape of a cross, and crossing paths. I thought about it all night. Cross. Cross. Cross. And the next day, I started crossing paths with Kenneth. Over and over. Our paths would literally cross, you know? Me coming from the north and him from the west.”

“Yeah.”

Like the Wicked Witch.

“Sooooo,” I said slowly, “what are you saying, then?”

Naoki sped up. “Okay. So I thought, Why is this happening? What is it about the word cross? Or about Kenneth? I thought of the time I found you and Thomas.” Naoki started tracing out a path in the air with her index finger. “I was in the library. Waiting for a book to find me. And you were in your study hall, talking about mysteries. And I’d been thinking about being lost. And the mystery of lost. How lost is a mystery. And I just thought, you know, that maybe there is no book with what I’m looking for. The word book felt so far away. And I was walking down the hall and I heard you say ‘mystery,’ and I thought how life can be a perfect mystery. And then I found you.”

Her index finger pointed at me. Naoki smiled.

“Okaaaaay.” I could feel the little stones on the ground digging into my feet.

“I think what all this cross and crossing paths means is that Kenneth is supposed to be in our cross paths.” Naoki took a deep breath. “That’s it.”

“I don’t get it.” I could feel myself coiling inward. “Uh,” I stammered, “just so we’re clear, this is the guy who glued a cross to my locker.”

Which I still had in my bag, incidentally.

The gravelly rhythm of sneakers grinding against dirt roused in the distance. Naoki’s face stayed still, soft but frozen like a snowman’s. “Are you sure it was him?”

“Uh. No, if by ‘sure’ you mean I saw him do it.”

Naoki tapped her finger on her lip. Her nails were painted green and blue. “Hmmmm. I don’t think it was him.”

“Puh!” I scoffed. “Why not?”

“I just, I don’t see it. I can’t explain it. I just feel this overwhelming thing, like we are supposed to cross paths.”

“Well, maybe you’re supposed to cross paths with him separately.” I could feel my words speeding up, running hotter and hotter.

Naoki paused. Tapped her lip again. “I mean we, like, all of us.”

“Well, I don’t want to have to hang out with a homophobe.”

“Maybe he isn’t.”

“Maybe it’s less of a big deal for you if he is,” I spat.

Naoki shifted and crossed one foot over the other. Waiting. Maybe for me to say something else. I don’t know what.

“Hmmmmm,” she said finally. “Could we say we’re going to think about it?”

It was pointless to say no. I mean, technically, it was my and Thomas’s club more than it was Naoki’s. And technically Naoki had no business even really thinking about who should be a member. But it seemed mean to point that out.

In the ground I noticed a sharp rock sticking up out of the dirt. I kicked it lightly with the toe of my boot. There is an art to dislodging rocks like this. You have to wiggle them very gently until they come loose like a tooth.

“Monty?” Naoki tilted her head.

The rock wasn’t budging. I gave it another kick.

Hey, guess what, I thought. It was also true that, for a really nice person, Naoki was actually acting like kind of a homophobe. I’m sure, I thought, she would never think that. Even though it was true.

I could feel my brain filling up with angry bits, piling up like Ho Ho wrappers on a binge day. Like homework on a Sunday.

Naoki stared at me. I stared at my unmoving rock.

“Okay, well…” is all I got past my lips.

“Okay, well. Let’s just see,” Naoki said, her voice a whisper in the breeze.

“Sure.” I gave the rock one more kick.

“Okay. Amazing.” Naoki started to turn back to the school. “Hey, so what’s up with the Eye of Know?”

“Uh.” I looked down. Picked some stray threads off the leg of my jeans. “Maybe later.”

“Maybe later.” Naoki shrugged. “Bye.”

And she gathered up her stuff and waved goodbye. Coincidentally, the sun tucked itself away into a little gray cloud, which decided to take up residence over my head.

On my way to class, I spotted him, Mr. Kenneth White. Not in costume. Unless he was dressed up as someone who wore the same son-of-an-evangelical-preacher non-outfit of denim and white every day. He was looking out the window, his arms crossed.

I had this thought where I would go up to him and say, “I’ve seen your dad’s videos, you know.”

I had. On Friday night, as Tesla celebrated, while I waited for Naoki to IM me back, I’d sat and watched a bunch of his dad’s videos.

There were a lot of them.

“I saw a video of you and your dad in New York,” I would say, “when you were protesting a wedding. It was a video taken by someone who was supposed to be filming the wedding of a friend or something. And the lesbians getting married are in white, and they’re standing in a park with their friends and family. Just some little park with ducks and stuff. And one of the lesbians is wearing a suit and the other is wearing this big dress. And the video goes in and out of focus. And all of a sudden, your dad walks in with a bullhorn, screaming about saving the American family. And the last thing the camera zooms in on is his stupid face. In his stupid white suit. At someone else’s wedding.”

Maybe he would look at me. Then I’d get to say, “And there is no way you’re going to be a member of the only other group outside my family that I care about in this world.”

That’s what I should say, I thought.

Not that you would hear it.

Even though it’s true.

Suddenly I thought of the Eye. I flipped my bag off my back and started digging inside for it.

But then Kenneth looked up and started walking, and it occurred to me that we were about to cross paths, so I picked up my bag and scooted back and around the other side of the building.

See, it is possible to avoid a prophecy, I thought. It just depends on where you step.

It was still a few minutes to bell, so I headed to my locker, bumping into Thomas, in full Queen.

“Going to your locker?” he asked in sing-song.

“Yeah.”

“How’s Naoki?” he asked in regular voice.

“Fine.”

“Okay.” Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Hey, I thought you said you were going to be the Joker for Halloween.”

“Yeah, I forgot.”

Next to my locker a crew of Jefferson’s most popular stood comparing costumes.

Madison Marlow had come as Hillary Clinton, which impressed most of the teachers. I didn’t think she looked all that much like Hillary Clinton except that she was wearing kind of a business-suit-type outfit. It looked a little slutty to be Hillary. I don’t think Hillary wears a lot of miniskirts.

About a dozen other girls were dressed up in … basically what looked like underwear to me.

Sixteen-year-old fairy time.

I looked over to catch Thomas giving an appraising look.

“Your drag is way better than theirs,” I whispered, opening my locker.

“The Kardashians stuffed their butts,” Thomas whispered back, pointing at the Parte twins.

“With real butt stuffing,” I sneered.

I was about to close my locker when I was hit with a heavy thud against my back. “What are you supposed to be? A black hole?”

“Hey!” I spun around.

“Oooohh. Testy!” It was Matt. Wearing what looked like a weird mix of a Walmart ninety-nine-cent witch costume and a pound of horror makeup. He leaned against the row of lockers. “How do I look? I know you gays are the fashion committee around here, so I thought I’d ask. Do I look like a leading man?”

“MATT!”

Matt threw his hands in the air. “Hey, man, relax! Okay? I’m getting into character. Ready for my big debut.”

“Go away.” I stepped back. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the twinkle of Thomas’s crown as he hovered.

“You don’t like my outfit? Maybe I just need a prop. Excuse me, Propmaster.” Matt spun around, snatching Thomas’s apple from his hand.

“Hey! Give that back!” That was me, not Thomas, by the way. Thomas just rolled his eyes.

Matt tossed the apple in the air, caught it, and walked off down the hallway.

“Did he really just steal your apple?” I screeched.

Thomas brushed the wig hair out of his eyes. “It’s just an apple. I’ve got fifteen cents to get another one.”

“It’s not about fifteen cents, Thomas!”

I am standing in a hailstorm, and I’m the only one who can see it’s raining, my brain screamed. It cooked with the thought till my eyes watered.

Thomas looked at me. His lips were painted cherry red, outlined so they curled up. So it was an effort to frown. Which he was, just a little. “I know it’s not. But it’s still only fifteen cents,” Thomas said, adjusting his crown. “Cue bell.”

 Why Thomas puts up with everything and doesn’t get mad

That day, instead of study hall, we had Intramural Sports Day.

So everyone had to do an intramural sport.

Mandatory physical fitness. GOOD FOR US ALL, read the poster decorated with stock photos of smiling kids.

For whatever reason, I’d signed up for soccer.

Some of the kids showed up on the field in their costumes. One kid just changed out his pants so he was an intergalactic warrior in track pants. A girl named Susie insisted on wearing her bunny ears.

I threw on the only sports gear I had, which was an old pair of track pants and one of Momma Jo’s field hockey jerseys. I took a very, very, very wide, and de facto defensive, position.

Which is to say I walked to the edge of the field and lay down on the grass, hoping not to be noticed.

 Matt Truit

Matt Truit.

There are so many reasons not to like Matt Truit.

It is not even worth counting.

He is obnoxious.

He is mean.

He is a jerk.

The worst thing about Matt Truit, the worst thing of all, is the fact that I didn’t always hate Matt Truit.

The word I was looking for earlier popped into my head. Like a beacon or a crooked cartoon halo.

Enchanting.

 Enchanting Jerks and ME

Right.

For seventy-two hours, his first seventy-two hours in Aunty, when he transferred last year, I actually liked Matt Truit.

Maybe even a lot.

I remember what he looked like that first day. I can actually see him standing at the front of the class. From Ohio, the teacher had said. Matt’s one foot was kind of shaking a bit, but he had this big smile on his big lips. And he was wearing a T-shirt that said HUG ME on it.

Mr. Todd told him to sit next to me, and I was supposed to, like, show him around. Thomas and Naoki were both out sick, so I was kind of like, you know, “Hey, why not?”

And so there was Matt Truit plopped down next to me. Smelling like soap.

“Nice shirt,” I said.

And Matt smiled and he said, “Are you the official fashion police?”

It wasn’t a mean or shitty statement back then. It was just, like, a joke.

And I said, “There’s not really a police so much as a Committee of Appropriate School Wear, of which I am a member.”

Anyway. He drew this weird little potato man on my math book for me. This angry potato that could cook himself and then eat himself.

It was really funny.

For lunch, he took me out to McDonald’s to thank me for helping him, which was kind of cool because, you know, it wasn’t like I was tutoring him or anything. I’d been asked to sit with him in a class.

While we waited in line, he did all these impressions of all these dopey kids from Ohio. And he said California was full of hippies, which it is.

I did my impression of this art teacher we used to have who used to praise everyone’s work with this deep “whoooa,” which always sounded like “duuuude” to me.

“Whooooa. Look at your painting, Montgomery. It’s like … whoooa.”

After we got our food, I didn’t know where to sit or whether to sit. All the tables were full of Madison Marlows and their posses. So I just stood there, holding my tray like a dork, until Matt stepped ahead of me and walked over to a booth.

“You just gonna stand there?”

Halfway through his burger, Matt looked up and pointed at me with a fry. “You have really cute lips,” he said, then popped the fry in his mouth. “Like, they’re a cupid’s bow. That’s a thing, right?”

“Oh yeah?” My hands shook a little as I tried to casually sip on my soda and not choke on my straw.

“Yeah.” Matt looked down at his burger, smiling. “They’re really cute. They’re like a painting or something. You have a boyfriend?”

My body forgot how to stop drinking from a straw. I had to literally lift my head off it. Like a crazy person. “Uh. No.”

Matt didn’t seem to notice. “You should. You’re too cute to be single. You a virgin?”

A little chill ran up my arms. “What?”

“It’s a joke. You should wear skirts. I bet you’ve got nice legs.”

Why hadn’t I seen it?

Because I’m an idiot.

The next morning in math, he carved all this stuff into my textbook, then he kind of ran off after class. Then, in the afternoon, he ran into me in the hallway and asked me to come help him with his math homework at lunch the next day.

“After you carved up my textbook?” I said, standing in the hallway, wearing the only short skirt I owned (a garage sale find).

Matt stared at my legs, then looked up at me and smiled a huge celebrity smile. “What? That was art! That was me giving my art to you! You should be grateful.”

I said yes. Yes, I will help you.

Because I’m stupid.

“Nice skirt.”

We sat on a hill by the soccer field, his notebook half on his lap and half on mine. He slid his hand under the flap, up onto my thigh. His hand brushed over my skin, over my fuzzy legs that I hadn’t shaved because I almost never thought about my legs as something someone would see or touch.

My body quaked a bit. I started to shift away.

“You know what? I bet you want to kiss me,” he said. And he smiled. A new smile I didn’t know yet.

I could feel the skin on my thigh getting warm under his touch. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you do.”

I leaned forward and I kissed him. He basically asked me to. And I wanted to because at the time I thought he was cute. I thought he liked me. I thought, you know, he’s funny. He’s not like the kids here. He’s different.

I was enchanted. We had three soft kisses. They were these amazing little melty kisses.

Then his hand grabbed my thigh. Clamped down. And all the sudden it was just like tongue. And I pulled back.

“Relax.” He smiled, and he pulled me on top of his lap. I remember the pencil in my pocket jabbing into my side as I crawled on top of him and shoved the textbook aside. And I felt—okay, yeah, I felt this immediate surge. Like, a want. Like I wanted him.

We kissed again. I learned to manage the overwhelmingness of tongue. And the meltiness came back.

But that feeling was quickly replaced by something else, specifically his hand pushing under the front of my sweater. I could feel him searching for my boobs, like, clawing past my T-shirt in this weird, frustrated way.

“Uh. Wait! Wait. No.” I put my hand on his, which was firmly entrenched on the edge of my bra.

“Uh! What?” Matt rolled his eyes.

I started to sweat. “Um. I mean. It’s just … really public here. I don’t want to—”

Matt leaned back. Appraising. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing! I just—”

“Oh my God, I knew it.” Matt slid out from under me, stood up fast, brushed the grass off the back of his jeans. “You’re a dyke, right?”

I sat in the grass, curled my knees up. “No! Wait. What? Why would you ask me that?”

“Forget it.”

It was weird, suddenly not knowing what someone knew. Had someone told him about my moms? I mean, I would have said something, I guess. I just hadn’t gotten to it yet.

The sun beat down on the top of my head.

“I gotta go,” he said. “Later.”

And he just walked away.

The next day, Matt didn’t sit next to me in math. He sat at the back with these other guys. After class I found him in the hall, and I grabbed Thomas, who was finally back in school, to introduce him to Matt.

As I grabbed Matt’s arm, I felt him pull away. And he kind of let out this noise. This, like, scoff.

And I was like, Oh. Wait.

Oh wait, this is not what I thought it would be for a teeny-tiny second. Oh wait, it’s what I’ve thought it would be since I got to this crummy school and realized everyone who goes here is an asshole. Oh wait, never mind. Never mind whatever I said to you, I wanted to tell Matt. I “un” this whole week. I take it back.

I un-kiss you. I un-like you.

I un-touch you and un-want you to touch me.

Whatever happened now officially did not happen.

I remember the three of us just standing there. Thomas, Matt, and me. And Matt kind of looking at me. And smirking.

“Uh. Matt,” I said hesitantly, “this is my friend Thomas.”

“Charmed.” Thomas smiled, holding out his hand for a handshake.

“Uh. Right.” Matt turned and looked at his friends. Turned back. Looked at me. Smirked. “Charmed.”

A few days after that, he was walking with the football team, like almost the whole team, and I passed him in the hallway. I was a few steps away when I heard, “Just because she’s a dyke doesn’t mean I’m not gonna tap that.”

That’s pretty much the whole story.

Except to say that I threw the skirt away.

Except to say that after that, I heard Matt tell Madison Marlow’s boyfriend, or boyfriend at the time, Fred Brewer, that I jumped him his first day. And I offered to have sex with him. Because I’m desperate for sex. Even though I’m a dyke. I’m desperate to have man sex.

“Don’t listen to them,” Thomas always says. “There’s nothing they have to say that has any value. So it’s not worth listening to.”

Then they should all just shut up, I thought. But they don’t. They just keep talking and saying whatever they want, because who will stop them?

“Hey!” someone screamed, and I looked up to see a soccer ball headed my way, kicked ferociously by a Parte twin.

Mrs. MacDonald, phys ed teacher extraordinaire, finally noticed my horizontal position.

“Get up, Sole!”

I stood up just in time to spot a girl in a rainbow wig and a My Little Pony T-shirt changing toward me. I ran to the ball, throwing my foot out as it rolled my way. I kicked the ball … right into my team’s goal.

Game over.