Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (8 page)

“I bought some Postum,” I explain.

“What’s Postum?” Andrew asks Shawn.

Shawn shrugs and says to me, “I’m getting you some food.”

He takes off and Emily bursts in, grabbing my arm where he let go. “She hasn’t eaten since Saturday!”

I shoot her a death-beam look.

“She’s not anorexic or anything,” Emily blurts. “She’s . . . she’s just stressed about Dylan. They broke up.”

I give her super-laser-beam eyes. She covers her mouth again.

Tom raises his eyebrows. He mouths the words, “So you knew?”

I shrug, but Emily’s seen the whole thing and she says out loud, “He told her Saturday night.”

Tom’s back goes rigid. He shakes his head. “That’s crap.”

“What’s crap?” Andrew asks, looking clueless and silly in his soccer shirt. They are all wearing them. There must be a game today. “What’s crap?”

“Nothing!” I tell him. “Just how stupid I am passing out. What a weenie. Ha?”

I stand up, push away the helping hands, stagger over to Emily, and try to look like I’ve got it all together. Even I know I’m failing miserably. Shawn comes hauling ass over and he’s got a bagel in one hand and a grilled cheese in the other.

“I didn’t know what you’d want,” he says and he looks so sweet and little, like a four-year-old boy who has made his mommy a picture, even though he’s more like six foot eight and could have sex with every single cheerleader in school.

“Thanks,” I say. “That’s sweet.”

“Ooo, Shawn is sweet,” Andrew croons and bats his eyelashes.

Shawn turns red. “Better not let Dylan hear that.”

The silence sinks into all of us, even Shawn, who still holding the food, lifts his hands in the air and says, “What? What did I say?”

Emily grabs the grilled cheese for me and pulls me away, back toward our table, but not before I hear Andrew pantomimes the alligator saying, “Shawn, buddy, Dylan is no more.”

Tips about Postum

1. Postum is the elixir of the blue-hair set. Even brand new cans look like they come from the 1950s. There’s a dried-up label with old-fashioned block-style lettering that says, “Postum, Instant Hot Beverage. Original. Full-Bodied Taste. Naturally Caffeine Free.”
   
2. Postum mixing is an exacting experience. If you submerge the spoon into the hot water, the brown grains adhere to the metal becoming a brownish sludge reminiscent of dog diarrhea. I do not ever think about what it does to the lining of my esophagus and stomach. Some things you are better off not knowing.
   
3. You must tip the spoon, wait a moment, and then stir. Do not think about passing out in front of the cafeteria. Do not worry if it’s some new kind of seizure.
   
4. Sip and enjoy the combination of water, wheat bran, wheat molasses, and maltodextrin (from corn).
   
5. Fend off the curious who gawk and say, “What the hell is that?”
   
6. Hide beneath the cafeteria table and finish your drink away from the demanding crowds.
   

The first time I ever had a seizure was right after I started dating Dylan. We’d been just hanging out in the family room in the basement, watching
Survivor,
this reality show where they live in nasty places and vote each other off and whoever wins gets really skinny from only eating maggots, and they also get a million dollars. I was drinking my 509th Pepsi of the day and he was snarfing down nachos.

Somebody on
Survivor
was crying because she missed her husband and Dylan snorted. “God, what wusses.”

I started to agree, but the Pepsi can in my hand was shaking. I tried to put it down. But then my fingers let go. They straightened out all rigid and shook, shook, shook and I opened my mouth to say something but before I could, I was gone.

I woke up with my head in Dylan’s lap and Pepsi all over the floor.

“Dylan?” I was totally confused.

He kissed the top of my forehead. “It’s okay, Belle. You’re okay.”

Everything in my body hurt like I’d run a marathon. My head looped around against itself. I started to cry. “What happened?”

Dylan shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, sweetie, but I’m right here. I’m right here for you.”

“You swear?”

He nodded again. “Swear.”

But he won’t be anymore. He won’t be and I can’t handle that. I want to hide. It’s like everyone in the whole cafeteria is staring, staring, staring at me. Em keeps talking, trying to pretend like everything’s okay, but it isn’t. It isn’t at all.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I say to her.

“What?” she cocks her head. “The bell’s going to ring in like two minutes.”

I gulp the rest of my Postum and then I just get up and take off out the cafeteria door. I slam past everyone at a speed-walker pace and then sprint across the parking lot, heading toward the softball field. I race so fast that no one can stop me.

When I left, Em stood up and yelled my name. I hope no one heard her. I hope no one saw.

Tom saw though. Tom sees me now and he runs faster on those soccer legs. He grabs hold of me behind the old green dugout, by the words EASTBROOK ROCKS. We’ve both escaped the high school lockup, sprinted in school clothes (me) and soccer uniform (him) past everyone and everything, past gray walls with scuff marks on them, past linoleum floors and people’s concrete eyes, past the stares. Now, we’re out here under the big sky, with our backs against the dugout, barely panting, just a little.

“Life sucks,” he says to me.

I can’t say anything, just wipe my hand against my face, which is all wet from tears and sweat. I can’t tell which is which.

“Life sucks and then you die,” I mumble.

He coughs out a laugh. A squirrel chitters at us from the top of the dugout. We’ve invaded his space.

My back slides down the dugout wall. My bottom plops on the cold ground. My legs turn to straight sticks in front of me. Dylan told me they were pretty legs. I choke on my own breath and start to sob, just sob, because there isn’t anything else I can do.

My shoulders shake. My eyes turn into mountains releasing all the melted snow, turning it into rivers that cascade down my shirt, puddle into my hands and lap.

Tom leans me toward him. His arm wraps the straightness of my back, wraps itself around me. When all the snow has melted, I wipe my face with my hands. I look away at a softball, white, fat, round, stuck in a puddle full of leaves, forgotten and abandoned during some game last spring. I feel like the softball, but I’m not. Or maybe I am. I’m a softball and Tom’s the puddle I’m stuck in. No. Tom’s a leaf in the puddle with me, waiting to see what will happen. The puddle is my own tears.

“I’m sick of crying about this,” I say, wiping at my face.

He lifts an eyebrow and says in a real cranky way, “Have you cried about it a lot?”

It’s not like I’ve been a Mallory, really, completely crying and feeling sorry for myself. “I just mean, I’m tired about crying about this right now.”

He nods and his fingers drum against my shoulder. “It’s okay to cry. It sucks.”

I nod my head. “Yeah.”

The squirrel pelts down two acorns at us, one after the other.

“Grumpy little guy,” Tom says.

“Me?”

“The squirrel.”

The squirrel leaps from the edge of the dugout to a pine branch that swoops out near us. He rushes up toward the trunk, turns around, and scolds us again.

“I don’t feel like I know who I am anymore,” I tell Tom, and once the words rush out of me, just like a hyper squirrel’s chatter, the truth of them hits me hard in my stomach. I stare at Tom’s face, this teasing guy, this ex Mimi-flame. “Why am I telling you this?”

“You need a friend, Commie.”

“I have friends,” I say. A logging truck zooms by on Route 1, past the baseball field, heading to Bangor and points beyond. Maybe Canada. Maybe Boston. Maybe to a tanker that will take the lumber to Japan or Russia, somewhere exotic, somewhere not here. “I’m not a Commie.”

“You know that, then, don’t you?” Tom says. He pulls me closer and jostles me around in that brother way of his. The squirrel chucks another acorn at us. It hits my foot. Tom turns serious. “I think, that sometimes when you’re with the wrong person, you try to become what that person wants. You lose yourself and who you are, just a little bit, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get it back.”

“Like Dylan with me?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Or me with Mimi back in eighth grade. But I was really talking more about you with Dylan.”