Geography Club (10 page)

“He looks like he’s seeing a damn ghost!” Nolan said.

“Or a monster!” Jarred said. “He looks like he’s seeing a monster!”

I thought, Good quip, Jarred—seeing a monster is
totally
different from seeing a ghost. (Jarred wasn’t the brightest star in the nebula, but he sure looked good in his underpants.)

Nolan glanced at me. “Hey, Middlebrook, what do you think he looks like?”

So here I was. Suddenly, I’d found myself in another one of those defining, do-or-die moments. It was just like the Friday before, when I’d been up at bat in the bottom of the seventh. There weren’t any crowds watching me this time, just Nolan and Jarred. But I felt a lot more pressure from the two of them than I had from the crowd and the team the Friday before. It felt more important too. This wasn’t just about some stupid baseball game. It was about someone else’s feelings.

I’d like to say I rose to the occasion, just like I had on Friday. That I walked confidently up to the plate of that high school hallway and told Jarred and Nolan to go fuck themselves.

But I can’t say I did that, because this time, I stepped up to the plate, swung, and missed the ball completely.

I said to Jarred and Nolan, “He looks like a mouse trapped in the coils of a python. Look at his face—you can almost see his whiskers quivering.”

Jarred and Nolan both had to think about this for a second, working through it in their minds. It was more complicated than their usual jeers. But finally Nolan laughed, and then Jarred did too.

“Hey, Middlebrook!” Nolan said. “That’s pretty good!”

I laughed too, but I felt the exact opposite of happy. I’d never teased Brian before for anything. I’d never even laughed at him.

I was a shit, okay? I knew it then too. All I can say is what Kevin and I had been doing in the dark at the stinky picnic gazebo wasn’t the only traveling I’d been doing lately. I’d also been traveling to a place called the Land of the Popular, and the view from there was pretty damn good. When you threw in my new friends in the Geography Club and my dating Kevin Land—
Kevin Land!
—well, the Land of the Popular was pretty much paradise. I’d only been in paradise for two days, and I sure as hell wasn’t ready to go back home just yet. (At least we weren’t ridiculing Brian for being gay. I definitely wouldn’t have joined in if they’d been ridiculing him for being gay. At least that’s what I told myself.)

We kept laughing at Brian, and Nolan said, “Boo!” and Brian actually flinched, God damn him.

Jarred growled like a monster, but at least this time, Brian didn’t flinch.

I couldn’t think of a sound to make that sounded like a python, so I growled like a monster too.

Through it all, we all laughed except Brian.

And then, just when I thought I couldn’t feel any more miserable, I looked back at Brian and saw that Min had stepped onto the landing above him. She had books in her arms too, like she’d also come from the library.

Even as I was still laughing at Brian, my eyes met Min’s. It was like when I’d been trying to stare down the pitcher in that baseball game the week before. But there was no way I was going to stare Min down. Because I could see in her eyes that she had seen and heard everything that I had just said and done.

Min didn’t talk to me in that hallway after school, when Nolan and Jarred and I had been laughing at Brian Bund. She just watched me for a second more, then without saying a word, marched down the stairs, pushing her way between Nolan and me. I quickly stepped out of her way. Brian, smart guy that he was, took the opportunity to hightail it out of there in her wake.

“What’s
her
problem?” Nolan said. Min was pretty obviously pissed.

“Bitch,” Jarred said. But I noticed that both of them had finally stopped laughing.

I didn’t talk to Min later that night either. She didn’t IM me, and I didn’t IM her. And the next day, she ate lunch not with Gunnar and me, but with some of her friends from the Girl Scouts.

Min didn’t talk to me about what happened in that hallway with Brian, but somehow I had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be the last I’d hear about it.

The next afternoon, at the Tuesday meeting of the Geography Club, Min walked into Kephart’s classroom and said, “We have a problem.” We almost never did the whole five-minute thing anymore, where we each had five minutes to say whatever we wanted. Now it was usually more of a free-flowing conversation.

“What kind of problem?” Belinda said. Min had been the last to arrive. Everyone else was already there.

“Brian Bund,” Min said. Here we go, I thought. Now Min was going to tell everyone what I had done to Brian. She was obviously trying to punish me. I was kicking myself for not telling everyone my side of the story first. Then again, I wasn’t exactly sure what I could have said.

“What about him?” Kevin said.

“People are really ripping into him,” Min said. “It’s terrible.” She looked directly at me. “Isn’t it, Russel?”

I didn’t say anything, just looked down at the floor. What could I say? I deserved all the crap Min was flipping me, and more.

“It sucks,” Terese said. “But you said ‘we’ have a problem. What does Brian have to do with us?”

“I just think we should do something.”

“What?” Kevin said. “Why?”

“Come on,” Min said. “Don’t you guys feel bad for him? What must that be like?”

“Sure,” Ike said. “Must be horrible. But what can we do?”

“For one thing,” Min said, “we could invite him to join the Geography Club.”

As soon as she said this, it got so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I thought, Why is she doing this to me? I told myself that this was just about her being competitive with me—that she was jealous of my newfound popularity, and she wanted to take me down a peg.

“Are you serious?” Terese said at last.

“Sure,” Min said. “Why not?”

Kevin said, “Well, for one thing, we don’t even know he’s gay. That’s what everyone says, but we don’t know it’s true. It probably ain’t.”

“That shouldn’t matter,” Min said. “Belinda’s not gay.”

“Yeah!” Belinda said directly to Kevin. “Watch it, buster.”

“Besides,” Min said, “everyone
thinks
he’s gay. They rip into him
because
they think he’s gay. And we’re a support group for gay kids and kids who can relate to us. Don’t we have some responsibility here?”

“No,” Terese said. “We’re a support group for us. What’s happening to Brian is shitty, but it’s not our job to make it better.”

What
was
the purpose of the Geography Club? On that first day in Kephart’s classroom, we’d talked about a lot of things, but we’d never really talked about that. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, but now I saw that it kind of was.

But the fact was, we
were
a gay club. And Brian was being teased because people thought he was gay. Min was right. If we stood for anything at all, we did have a responsibility here. That’s when I knew that this idea of Min’s—inviting Brian to join us—wasn’t about Min being competitive with me, or her trying to punish me. It was about her wanting to do the right thing.

“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “What if Brian talks? What if we tell him about the club, and he decides not to join, but then he tells someone about us?”

“He won’t talk,” Min said. “Are you kidding? More than anyone, he knows what it’s like to be an outcast. You really think he’d want to pass that on to us?”

“He might,” Ike said. “You know what they say about drowning rats. That they can claw each other’s eyes out.”

“Come on,” Min said. “These are just excuses. They’re not the real reason you guys don’t want him to join.”

“Yeah?” Terese said. “Then what is?”

“Because it’s Brian Bund,” Min said.

No one said anything, which I guess proved her point.

“It’s not just that,” Terese said. “There’s the whole gay thing. Everyone thinks Brian’s gay. If he joins the Geography Club, they’ll think we’re gay too.”

“Oh, that’s just stupid!” Min said, and Terese stiffened a little. “We’re the Geography Club. If anyone even asks—which no one will—we tell them Brian joined because he wanted to learn about geography. Who wouldn’t believe that? No one’s going to think anything at all.”

When no one responded, Min said, “I think we should vote on it.”

“Vote?” Belinda said, and Min explained how we’d decided at that first meeting that any conflicts be decided by a vote.

“That makes sense,” Belinda said. “Well, I vote that we ask him to join. Build up the nongay contingent a bit.”

“So do I,” Min said firmly.

“Well, I’m against it,” Terese said, and Min stared at her like Terese had just slapped her in the face. I wasn’t sure why Min was so shocked. It had been clear from the way Terese was talking that she was going to vote against Brian. But I think Min had never considered that Terese would actually vote against her.

“Ike?” Belinda said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Me too,” Kevin said. “I’m against it.”

“What?” I said to Kevin. I was so surprised by what he’d said that I’d spoken aloud for the first time since Min had entered the room. Kevin was voting against asking Brian to join the Geography Club? It was so obviously the right thing to do! How could he not see that?

“It’s too risky,” Kevin said. “We’re taking a big enough risk just meeting like this. The fewer people who know, the better.”

“Russel?” Min said.

“Huh?” I said, still shocked by what Kevin had said. I’d been certain he was going to vote for Brian, which I guess was just as stupid as Min thinking Terese was going to vote for Brian. Instead, Kevin had voted against taking even a little tiny gamble in order to help Brian out. (So had Ike. So much for what Kevin had said about guys being the ones who liked to take risks, I thought. I guess he just meant snowboarding or whatever.)

“How do you vote?” Min said to me.

“Me?” I said. I had been going to vote with Min. But now that I knew how Kevin had voted, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to vote against him.

“What difference does it make how he votes?” Terese said suddenly. “The vote’s two to three. Even if he votes for Brian, it’ll just be three to three. In a tie vote, you stay with the status quo.” She looked at Ike. “Isn’t that right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s the way it works. You need a majority to do anything extra.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I was off the hook. I didn’t have to decide between Kevin and Min.

“The rest of us voted,” Min said. “Russel should too.” I instantly wanted to strangle her. Now she
was
trying to punish me! This
was
about her being competitive!

“But Terese’s right!” I protested. “My vote won’t make any difference.”

“Still,” Min said, looking directly at me. “It’s only fair.”

“Come
on
!” Terese said impatiently. “Just vote so we can get this over, and we can move on to something else.”

Everyone was looking at me. Thanks to Min, I had to say something—but what? On one hand, I knew she was right about Brian; we
did
have a responsibility—and I especially had a responsibility to help him, to make up for what I’d done to him in the hallway with Jarred and Nolan. But Ike was right too, about my vote not counting anyway. It was just symbolic or whatever. It would have been different if my vote had actually mattered. There was no reason to risk making Kevin mad over a stupid symbolic vote. (But even as I thought this, I suddenly remembered what Ike had said about those drowning rats.)

“No,” I said.

“No,’ what?” Min said.

Did she really need me to spell it out? “No,” I said. “I don’t want Brian to join the Geography Club.” The minute I said this, I thought, Why the hell didn’t I abstain? Wasn’t that always an option when you voted?

Now that I’d voted, I thought I saw Kevin relax a little—or was I imagining things? I couldn’t look Min in the eye, but I didn’t need to look at her to know that she was hating me with all her guts right then.

“Two to four,” Terese said. “The motion fails.” She was right, but she didn’t have to sound so gleeful about it.

“Min?” Belinda said. “That okay with you?”

Min just gave a tight little nod. At least she wasn’t looking at me anymore. I wondered if she’d ever look at me again.

I didn’t think my week could get much worse. But then came Friday and my next date with Trish Baskin.

As usual, Gunnar drove, and once again, we picked up the girls on the corner at the end of Kimberly’s street. We went for pizza at the very same pizza parlor where the Geography Club had met for the first time, but the meal couldn’t have been more different. For one thing, Trish and Kimberly and Gunnar had no problem deciding on a pizza (pepperoni—no one even asked me what I wanted).

The conversation was different too. At one point during the meal, Kimberly said, “Mr. Donaldson is so hot! I would so fuck him if he wanted.” Mr. Donaldson was one of our school’s science teachers, and given that Kimberly’s date, Gunnar, was sitting right next to her, her comment had to be something of a new low in tackiness. (Even without Gunnar sitting there, it was pretty tasteless.) But once again, my friend the doormat didn’t seem to mind.

Later, as we were driving away from dinner, Kimberly turned around from the front seat of the car and said to Trish, “You sure you got the key?”

Trish nodded. “It’s in my purse.”

“Key?” I said.

“To my parents’ beach place,” Trish said.

“I thought we were going to a movie.”

“Oh yeah,” said Gunnar from the front seat. “I forgot to tell you. Trish snuck the key to her parents’ beach place. We thought we could head out there instead of a movie.”

“What’s out at the beach place?” I said, but I already knew. There were bedrooms out at the beach place. Gunnar knew it too. That’s why he’d lied and told me we were going to a movie. He knew I wouldn’t have agreed to come otherwise.

Up in the front seat, Kimberly nestled up against Gunnar. Was she really going to have sex with him, someone she didn’t even like, just because he managed to get me hooked up with Trish for one more night?

But that wasn’t my problem. My problem was that one of those bedrooms out at the beach place was meant for Trish and me.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t very well jump out of a moving car. And I couldn’t demand that Gunnar pull over and let me out—not without embarrassing myself and Gunnar in the process. So before I knew it, Gunnar had parked the car in the gravel driveway of a darkened little cabin out along the water.

“Fucking
brrrr
!” Kimberly said once we were inside. “Turn on some heat!” The cabin was decorated in a kitschy nautical theme—lots of shells and seagulls and lighthouses and glass fishing floats.

“Russel?” Trish said. “You wanna build a fire?”

“I guess,” I said.

As I was wadding up newspaper by the fireplace, I leaned over to Gunnar and said, “Why didn’t you tell me we were coming out here?”

“I thought I did,” he said. “I guess I forgot.”

Even now, he couldn’t tell me the truth. That annoyed me almost more than the original lie.

By the time the fire was burning, I turned to see that Kimberly was lighting a fire of her own: she’d found Trish’s parents’ liquor and was lining the bottles up on the seaman’s chest that served as a coffee table.

“
Here
we go!” Kimberly said, marveling at all the alcoholic selections. At first, I thought she was going to insist that we all get bombed with her, which only proved that I still didn’t know Kimberly Peterson very well. No, apparently the alcohol was only so she could get loaded
herself
. Once she started pounding them down, it was clear she couldn’t have cared less about the rest of us.

“Just make sure you leave at least half in every bottle,” Trish said, and Kimberly completely ignored her. If Trish really cared whether the bottles were still half full at the end of the evening, she needed to get herself a new best friend.

For the next hour or so, we sat around talking, and Kimberly got drunker and drunker, laughing at anything even remotely funny, and then laughing at things that weren’t at all funny. I drank Coke, but Gunnar and Trish both followed Kimberly’s lead and started tossing back shots. At the end of that hour, there was a lot less than half the alcohol left in each of the bottles lined up on that seaman’s chest.

Gunnar got up to pee, and I pulled him aside. “Hey,” I said. “You think maybe you had enough?”

“Huh?” He obviously wasn’t thinking, or seeing, too clearly.

“You have to drive us home, remember?” Already I was thinking that I’d be the one driving us back, but I wanted to at least plant the idea that maybe we could be heading home before too long.

“I’m
fine
,” he said, and he actually slurred the word. “’Sides, I was thinking we could spend the night out here!”

I didn’t bother trying to argue. I knew there was nothing I could say to change his mind. He was like the sea captain in one of the wave-tossed ships in the tacky ocean paintings on the walls of this cabin; despite the obvious storm warnings, he was determined to see this voyage through.