Dating Sarah Cooper (5 page)

Meanwhile, Sarah, for her part, was kind of a natural at being my girlfriend. Or maybe just at being
a
girlfriend. I’d only ever dated Austin, and we had a lot of…
unique
coupley quirks that basically meant I didn’t have much experience with acting like a girl who’d fallen head over heels for someone and couldn’t keep her hands off of them. Sarah, however, had dated plenty of boys, and knew how it was done.

But there were some things I knew she hadn’t had experience with, because they were things she wouldn’t have done with boys. She tucked my hair behind my ear when it got in my face while I was eating lunch, and later, she carried a book for me between two of our classes. It was actually a little funny, but only because Sarah made it funny by making it really obvious that she knew she was being a good girlfriend. As we walked back to her car together after school, hand in hand, she whispered, “If we were actually dating, you’d so be repaying me in sexual favors tonight.”

I started laughing, hard, and it was like most of the stress from that day just melted right off of me. She grinned back, lighting up at what seemed to be just the sight of a smile from me after I’d had such a rough day, and then she started the car and we began the drive to her house, where we planned to spend the rest of the afternoon learning how to make ourselves a convincing gay couple.

And I didn’t realize it then, as Sarah and I left the parking lot and sped down the road in her little four-door, but I think that by the end of that very first school day I’d already fallen a little bit in love with her.

Chapter Four

S
arah’s bedroom was, frankly, massive. Posters covered the majority of the wall space and she had a king-sized bed that took up a quarter of the room. The other three-fourths of it housed a desk where she kept her laptop, a bookshelf on which rested all of her favorite books, her dresser, and a flat-screen television I was more than a little jealous of.

She also had a lot of room to sprawl out on her floor between the TV and the bed, so that was what I did, clicking through television channels as Sarah sat beside me with her laptop resting in her lap. “So it looks like we have a lot of shows to get through,” she told me. “I can cover books, since I’m the bigger reader between the two of us, but that means you have to handle music.”

“There’s gay music?” I asked.

“Duh. Haven’t you heard of Madonna?” She did some more clicking, and then corrected, “Wait, that’s gay men. We need to listen to Tegan and Sara, Ani Difranco, and K.D. Lang. Or at least know a couple big songs from each.”

“What about television?” I asked. “Maybe we can get away with not watching it as long as we get the main plots memorized.”

“Well, the big one is
The L Word
,” Sarah explained. “It’s about a group of lesbians from, like, California. Then they all hook up with people. Like
Sex and the City
but gay.” She clicked around for a few more seconds. “
Glee
and
Pretty Little Liars
are on here too; we’ve seen those so we’re good. But I haven’t heard of any of these movies, wow.”

“Let me see.” I leaned over her shoulder to look at a list she’d pulled up. None of them rang a bell, with the exception of one. “Wait. How is
Bend It like Beckham
a gay movie?”

“Maybe we missed something when we watched it the first time.” Sarah looked like she was trying not to laugh. “Okay, anyway, we’re gonna have to study if we want to pull this off. Didn’t you get the
tiniest
feeling that that Jessa girl didn’t buy any of it yesterday?” She grinned as she asked the question.

“Yeah,” I sighed out. “Just slightly.”

“So if we can learn a little bit about each of these movies, she’ll think we took the time to watch them all, which makes us way more convincing. And I say we pick one to watch tonight, and then you go home and watch the pilot episode of
The L Word
while I try to find an online pdf of a popular young adult lesbian novel. Tomorrow morning, we finish trading notes, and mission accomplished, we are officially knowledgeable about lesbian culture.”

“Why am I totally unsurprised that you’re treating this like a school project you need to ace?” I sighed out. “Do you really think it’s worth doing so much work? I mean, obviously we want to put some sort of effort in, but say we don’t necessarily go the extra mile and then one girl doesn’t buy it. Does it really matter as long as everyone else does?”

“That one girl could cause a lot of problems if she gets snoopy,” Sarah pointed out. “And besides, you’re the one who wanted us to do something good here. If we learn about lesbians, we’ll come to understand more about them, and then we’ll be more open-minded in the future.”

“They’re not aliens, Sarah,” I mumbled, going back to channel-surfing. “They just date girls instead of guys. Not that hard to understand.”

“I know that. Look, it just can’t hurt to be prepared. You know how I am.”

“Yeah, alright. Fine,” I gave in. There was no use arguing with her when she was on a mission to learn something. “Just tell me what to do.”

We spent the next two hours memorizing character names and plotlines and movie titles and endings, and it wasn’t fun. Sarah did a better job than me, which wasn’t surprising, but I had to admit I was a little impressed with her even though I hated having to do all of the memorization in the first place. Yes, she’d made the blunder that’d gotten us to where we were now, but she seemed to realize the ramifications of her actions and was now genuinely trying to make the best of it.

She sent me home with a link to the pilot episode of that show she wanted me to watch, and once I’d gotten through dinner with my parents – which had become much more stressful over the past couple of days now that I was keeping a massive secret from them – I headed to my bedroom and forced myself to start the show. It was like Sarah’d described: six women in California were gay and did gay things and had gay drama. But it kind of sucked me in, honestly. By the end of the first episode I considered watching the second, but then I realized I was about to get sucked into a show explicitly for and about and probably
by
lesbians, and I couldn’t get past that mental block.

My phone went off on my nightstand just as I was setting my laptop aside. I had one new text message from an unknown number. It said: “
So here is something random, and u don’t know me. U should get ur shit together and go out with me.”

I stared as I tried to make sense of the less-than-intelligent string of words, and when they finally sank in, my grip tightened on the phone and I resisted the urge to reply. Instead, I scrolled down my contact list until I came to Jake’s number, and then debated only for a moment before I pressed the button to call him.

He sounded a little sleepy when he picked up. “Hello?”

“Hey, Jake. It’s Katie.” I laid back on my bed and stared up at my bedroom ceiling as I asked him, “Did I wake you up?”

“It’s fine; I was just taking a nap. Is everything okay?”

“Not so much.” I sighed and closed my eyes. “Some idiot got my cell number, so I’m getting harassed from the safety of my own bedroom now, which is lovely.”

“I’m sorry, Katie,” said Jake. “All I can say is that you have to focus on the good. Your friends all still love you, right? A lot of people that come out can’t say that.”

“But what am I supposed to do about everyone else? I have to spend every day with people staring and making comments and sending stupid anonymous texts to me about how I need to get my shit together and go out with a guy? How do you deal with it?”

“You need to start blocking numbers, honey,” he told me. “That’s the only thing you can do about the texts. For the people at school… you can only do what the rest of us do: Learn to be snarky, get a thick skin, and hope it gets better. People react to girls and guys differently though when we come out. Someone like Jessa could probably give you better advice than me.”

“I don’t think she likes me,” I admitted. “She was a little cold at the first meeting.”

“She just takes some time to warm up to new people,” he said. “Give her until next Tuesday, when we all meet up again. And look, Katie, try to remember that you’re really lucky. A lot of us don’t have someone by our side when we come out. You have Sarah. Just being there for each other is gonna help both of you out a lot. I mean, imagine if you were alone in all of this.”

“Yeah,” I told him faintly, thinking that even after just one day of faking being gay
and
of
having Sarah by my side throughout it all, it was easy to see why so many other gay kids wound up clinically depressed. Sarah had thought it’d be easy to be a lesbian, and while I’d had the presence of mind to know this wouldn’t be easy, I’d had no idea it’d be this hard. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jake.” I said. “Bye.”

“Bye, Katie.”

I didn’t see him the next day, and that turned out to be one of many of in a string of disappointments I experienced that day. It started with small stuff: Annie, the girl I sometimes exchanged hellos or waves with in the hallway when we’d pass each other on our way to class, decided that our new tradition was that
I’d
wave and
she’d
look at her feet and ignore me. So that was cool.

I pretty much forgot about that, though, when I ran into Austin. We nearly crashed head-on in the hallway, looked up, saw each other, and then did everything we could to hastily side-step each other and move on. As he walked away, I heard some guy shout something to him that I couldn’t quite make out. I spent my next class period wondering if Sarah and I’s lie had had negative consequences for Austin somehow, and I walked around with a heavy heart for the rest of the day.

Sarah wasn’t much help, and the reason for that was obvious: Sam Heath spoke to her. It was while we were at her locker together, and it wasn’t much: just a sly “cute” as he eyed the two of us up and down while on his way to class, but I thought Sarah might burst out into song at any moment, and I had to elbow her in the side to remind her she was supposed to be into
me
and not Sam. It wasn’t until Sarah’d already gone off to her next class that I saw Jessa glance at me from just a few lockers down, and realized that if she’d seen that entire exchange, we were probably screwed.

And as if that wasn’t nerve-wracking enough, I also had a pop quiz.

It all wasn’t as bad as yesterday had been, but it wasn’t great, either, and I still left school feeling terrible. Sarah and I walked out to her car together; she planned to drive me home today so we could finally share what we’d learned last night. Before we could get into her car, however, the last person I expected to see trying to talk to me jogged over to us.

Austin’s hands were shoved into his pockets and his lanky form was hunched over just slightly, like he was trying to humble himself. His eyes darted back and forth between us as he cleared his throat uncomfortably, and I nearly jumped when I felt Sarah’s arm snake possessively around my waist.

“What do you want, Austin?” she asked him, and I could practically sense her eyes narrowing at my side. I wondered how hilarious she was finding this, inwardly.

“Uh… can I talk to you, Katie?” he asked, his voice quiet. “I promise it’ll be quick.”

“It’s fine,” I said, both to him and to Sarah, and he nodded his thanks, turning and walking away. I followed, and when we were out of Sarah’s earshot, he paused and faced me, letting out a sigh and squeezing his eyes shut.

“Okay.” He looked at me. “The whole school’s saying you and Sarah are…”

“Yeah,” I interrupted swiftly, biting my lip. “I know.”

“So that… back there, she was-” He cut himself off and glanced behind me, where Sarah stood, probably watching us. “I just wanted to know if that… if that was why we… why you ended things with us.” His eyes found his feet. “Everyone’s saying I turned you gay.”

I watched him carefully for a moment. The heavy feeling in my chest intensified, and I didn’t know what to tell him. Which was better: To lie and tell him I’d left him for Sarah, or to be honest and say I’d left him because I just didn’t want to be with him? I wasn’t even sure being left for a girl was preferable to being left for no one at all.

“You didn’t turn me gay, Austin,” I said at last. “People either are gay or they aren’t. Anyone who tries to tell you you ruined guys for me is full of crap.”

That answer didn’t seem to satisfy him. “Look, all I’m saying is that you broke up with me without any explanation. I’m trying to get one now.”

“Why now?” I asked him. “I wanted to talk to you right after it happened, but you ignored me.”

“Yeah, I was a little pissed,” he shot back. “Can you blame me? You were the girl of my dreams and you dumped me.”

I sighed, trying to keep calm. “I get that. I do. But I still wanted to be friends. I still want to
now
.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” he said. “But it might help to know that at least you were just gay and I didn’t do anything wrong. You started dating Sarah right after we broke up, right? Did you leave me for her?”

He was looking at me knowingly now, and I swallowed hard. “No.”

He shook his head. “That’s bullshit, Katie. C’mon.”

“I didn’t,” I insisted. “That happened after. All of it.”

“And you expect me to believe our breakup was totally about the two of us even though you switched teams and started dating your best friend within a few weeks? We were together for a
year
.”

“Look, I broke up with you because I never had feelings for you, okay?” I burst, and it was like the floodgates in my chest had been opened, and everything I’d held back to spare his feelings when we’d broken up came pouring out now. “You were my first everything, and I know that that’s special and all, but I just didn’t feel the way about you that I could tell you felt about me. You were a nice guy, and I felt pressured to start dating because all of my friends were doing it. I mean, I cared about you, but it wasn’t-”

“Like it is with her,” he cut me off. His eyes were looking past me again, at Sarah. “I get it. So you really always were gay.” He turned away, adding a quick, “See you,” and I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from correcting him as he walked away; to stop myself from pointing out that just because I didn’t like
him
didn’t mean I didn’t like boys. But that would’ve blown my cover, and so I let him walk away, and then rejoined Sarah by her car, where she was leaning against it, idly examining her fingernails.