Geography Club (4 page)

“You like him,” Min said to me a few minutes later, after we’d thrown my bike into the back of her parents’ Honda, and she was driving me home.

“What?” I said uneasily. “Who?”

“Russel, please,” Min said. “Kevin. You like Kevin.”

“I do not!” I was shocked and appalled by the suggestion. I was also stunned that Min had picked up on it so quickly. What had given me away?

“No?” Min said.

“No!” I said.

“Well, you have to admit he’s hot.”

“No, I don’t!”

Min looked over at me from the driver’s seat. “Oh, Russel, come on. He
is
hot. Bisexual, remember?”

Something told me that wouldn’t be the first time I’d hear those words.

“So?” she said.

“So what?” I said.

“So don’t you think he’s hot?”

“I already told you. No.”

Min slowly shook her head. “That is so sad. You can’t even admit when a guy’s hot. And when we were all being so honest back there at the pizza place.”

“Okay!” I said.

“Okay, what?”

“What you said.”

Min smiled. “So say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say you think Kevin Land is hot.”

“Min!”

“What’s the big deal? Why can’t you say it?”

“Okay, I think Kevin Land is hot! Happy?”

She slapped the dashboard in victory. “
Ha!
I knew it! I
knew
you liked him!”

Like I said, Min liked to win. This was another example of that. But she hadn’t won yet. I could still change the subject.

“
Three years?
” I said. “You’ve been with Terese for
three years
, and you never bothered to tell me?”

Now it was Min’s turn to blush. “It wasn’t like that,” she said. “We met at Girl Scout camp. At first, it was just this weird inseparable/infatuation thing, except I didn’t know it was infatuation. The sex didn’t come until later on.” Sex, I thought. There was that word again.

“But she had her friends, and I had mine,” Min went on. “They didn’t really mix. So we never told anyone. Not just that we’re together. Not even that we’re friends. We meet in this old warehouse down on Fracton. All these years, my parents think I’ve been doing volunteer work down at the YMCA. Twisted is what it is. Really sick and neurotic and twisted.” She looked over at me again and scrunched up her face in embarrassment. “And I
love
it!”

I laughed, then stared out at the darkening road in front of us. The days were getting longer, but they weren’t very long yet.

“I guess I do like Kevin,” I said at last. It was a relief to finally say it out loud. But kind of scary too.

Min just smiled. She liked to win, but at least she didn’t rub it in when she did.

“But it’s stupid,” I said. “Kevin Land? I mean, what’s the point?” I wasn’t fishing for compliments. This is really what I thought. In an infinite number of possible universes, I couldn’t imagine even one universe where Kevin and I got together.

That’s why I almost fell out of the car when Min just smiled again and said, very casually, “Yeah, I think he likes you too.”

The next morning, on my way to third period P.E., I happened to walk by the office of Mr. Rall, the school principal. The door was open, and I heard heated voices coming from inside.

“I will
not
be censored in my own classroom!” said a voice. It was Ms. Toles, the health teacher, and she had that little quiver of indignation in her voice that people get when they’re absolutely convinced they’re right, and they can’t believe that anyone would even suggest otherwise.

“Corrine, please,” Mr. Rall said. “Let’s all try to stay calm.”

“I’m sorry, David, but what you’re saying is just not acceptable!”

“Not
acceptable?
” came a second male voice, with exactly the same quiver of indignation that Ms. Toles had. “I’ll tell you what’s not acceptable! Making obscene gestures to a classroom full of teenagers!”

I skidded to a stop in the hallway. Adults arguing about sex? Suddenly, this was getting good. And for a few seconds at least, I was the only student within earshot.

I edged sideways in the hall, trying to get a view of the action inside the office.

“What’s
obscene,
Reverend Bowd,” Ms. Toles said evenly, “is the notion that teenagers should be kept purposely ignorant about the functioning of their own bodies!”

So it was Reverend Bowd who was getting Ms. Toles all bent out of shape. Frankly, I wasn’t surprised. He was always raising a stink about something or other in town, and it usually involved sex. A year or so earlier, he’d organized this big protest when he’d learned that one of the local video stores carried X-rated movies.

“Corrine,” Mr. Rall was saying, “I think Reverend Bowd may have a point about the cucumber. Maybe that was a tad graphic.”

Suddenly, I knew what this little discussion was all about. A couple of weeks earlier, Ms. Toles had been telling her health classes how to use condoms, and she’d rolled one onto a cucumber (a
big
cucumber, or so I heard). It had been the talk of the school for a week or so, and now it seemed obvious that it had only been a matter of time until Reverend Blowhard got himself involved.

Ever so slowly, I’d inched myself to a point where I could actually see someone inside the office. It was Ms. Toles, all bony and freckled and pale. But she looked anything but frail. On the contrary, with her frizzy red hair and proud stance, she reminded me of a lion.

“It’s well documented that the primary cause of condom failure among teenagers,” Ms. Toles was saying, “is the fact that many kids don’t know how to use them properly!”

I couldn’t wait to hear what Reverend Blowhard would have to say to
that
! But then Mr. Rall appeared in the doorway, rumpled and sweaty and flushed. He was already closing the door when he happened to glance out into the hallway and see me.

He quickly jerked the door the rest of the way closed, but not before I saw the expression on his face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an adult look quite that scared before.

I knew I should’ve been excited later that day when Min and I sat down for lunch. After all, Kevin, Terese, and Ike were meeting us, just like we’d agreed at the pizza parlor the day before. But instead of feeling excited, I felt uneasy about something—something I couldn’t put my finger on. It wasn’t quite one of those feelings of impending doom you get every now and then, but it was close.

Terese was the first to step up to our table.

“Hey,” she said. She had her lunch in a greasy brown paper bag, but she didn’t sit down.

“Hey!” I said, trying to sound all excited, despite how I felt. “Have a seat.”

She looked both ways, like she was about to cross a busy street. Then she barreled straight ahead, pulled out a chair, and sat.

Min immediately looked down at her food. That’s when it occurred to me that the two of them hadn’t ever been seen together at school before. It had to be weird for them.

Ike came by next, sidling up to our table like a cat burglar trying to evade the police.

“Great,” he said. “You guys made it.” But he didn’t sound like he thought it was great. He sounded like he sort of wished we’d forgotten.

Ike took a seat, but with an empty chair between him and everyone else.

We all sat there staring down at our food, and no one said anything, and I couldn’t believe this was the same group of people from the day before. How could something that felt so comfortable then feel so awkward now? Then I remembered my second meeting with Kevin at the stinky picnic gazebo. That had felt uncomfortable too, with neither of us able to think of anything to say. That’s when I knew that a conversation was like a child: you couldn’t just abandon it, then pick it up again a day later and expect it to be exactly the way it was before.

But that was only part of it. This wasn’t the back booth in a dark, deserted pizza parlor. This was the high school cafeteria. And in high school, everyone eats lunch with the same people every day. The people like them. Birds of a feather and all that? The four of us were birds of a feather, but no one knew that, and they couldn’t ever know it.

Terese glanced over at the table of Girl Jocks, all sweatshirts and ponytails. Ike wasn’t looking at the Lefty Radicals, with their piercings and Birkenstocks, but I could tell he knew they were there. It was like he wasn’t looking at them on purpose, so they wouldn’t notice where he was sitting.

Terese and Ike both knew they didn’t belong at Min’s and my table. Min and I knew it too. How we all could’ve forgotten this, I don’t know. We’d all been caught up in the excitement of the day before, and it had slipped our minds. But it had been in the back of my mind somewhere, because it was part of what had been bugging me, my feeling of semi-doom.

“’Sup?” It was Kevin, towering over us with his heaping tray of food and its three little cartons of milk. I breathed a sigh of relief. This was another thing that had been bothering me. I hadn’t been sure Kevin was going to show. The day before, I’d been well aware that he was the only one of us who hadn’t actually promised to come. But now that he
had
come, I wasn’t sure if he was actually going to sit.

The funny thing was, I wasn’t even sure I wanted him to sit there. It was one thing that Min, Terese, Ike, and I had sat down together. Maybe Terese’s and Ike’s friends would notice, but no one else would. It was something else entirely for Kevin Land to sit down with us. Everyone would notice that.

Kevin didn’t sit. He didn’t look nervous, but then I saw that he had such a firm grip on his tray that his knuckles were white.

“So,” I said. “Here we are.” You guessed it. The only thing I could think of to say.

This time, no one said anything, not even Min. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Wendy Garr at the Girl Jocks table pointing over at Terese. Terese wasn’t looking, but I knew she saw it too.

We were all having one of those “What were we thinking?” moments. What
had
we been thinking? Why hadn’t we seen this coming? We were all citizens of different countries. Did we really think we could just pull up chairs and sit down together? There was no neutral territory on a high school campus. The land was all claimed, and the borders were solid. We couldn’t just cross them at will.

The table two tables over was empty, and Brian Bund appeared out of nowhere and took a seat. He actually brought his lunch in a plastic lunchbox, and a
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
one at that.

Once again, I knew what we were all thinking. We were all thinking there were consequences for spending too much time outside the border of your own country. Eventually, they wouldn’t let you back in. In other words, you ended up exiled and alone, like Brian Bund.

At that exact moment, Gunnar showed up. Min, Gunnar, and I had eaten lunch together forever. How I could’ve forgotten this too, I don’t know.

“Hey,” Gunnar said, his own tray in his hands and a hundred questions on his face.

“Gunnar?” I said.

“Gunnar!” Min said. She’d forgotten Gunnar too. But we couldn’t very well turn him away, not without being total jerks. His arrival was actually good timing. It was the perfect excuse everyone needed to make their escapes.

Sure enough, Kevin said, “I should head. See you guys later!” I blinked, and he was walking away.

At exactly the same time, Terese gathered her food and stood. “Yeah!” she said. “Me too. Later!”

“Yeah!” Ike said, and he stood up so fast that he knocked over his chair.

Gunnar watched Kevin and Terese and Ike as they hurried away from us. Finally, he sat, still watching them as each was sucked back into his or her own circle of friends like a foreign particulate being engulfed by a giant white blood cell in some busy bloodstream.

“So,” Gunnar said. “What was that all about?”

“Class project,” Min said. Like me, she was a pretty good liar.

Even so, I didn’t think Gunnar was buying. He’d spent his whole life trying to be popular, so he was keenly aware of the school’s different cliques and groups. He knew what a strange gathering this had been. It didn’t help that when he’d arrived, they’d all scattered like drug dealers from a bust.

“Hey,” I said to Gunnar. “I’ve been getting woozy in algebra. They’ve been remodeling the classroom, and I think it’s the formaldehyde in the pressboard.” I was no fool. I knew when it was a good time to change the subject.

Sure enough, this time Gunnar took the bait. “It could be formaldehyde,” he said. “Or it could be benzene or xylene. They’re in pressboard too.”

Gunnar kept talking, but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about Terese and Ike and Kevin (especially Kevin). I wasn’t looking at any of them, and I knew none of them were looking at me. But once again, I knew exactly what they were all thinking. They were thinking what I was thinking, which was, Yesterday at that pizza parlor, I really made a connection with those guys. And now I wonder if I’ll talk to any of them ever again.

But I did talk to them again, the very next day. We met after school deep in the stacks of the library. I wasn’t sure whose idea it had been—I’d got the message from Min, who’d got an E-mail from Terese—but it was the perfect place to get together. If you’re looking for solitude, a high school library is one of the best places to go, especially in the two hours after classes. And if anyone saw us, we could always pretend we weren’t together, that we all just happened to be looking for a book in the same aisle at the same time.

Right before the meeting, I’d been wondering how it would feel. Would it be comfortable and real, like the pizza parlor? Or would it feel stilted and embarrassing, like the school cafeteria?

The second Min and I turned the corner and saw the faces of the others, I knew the answer. I felt that little swell of excitement like when you know you’re about to set the top score on a well-used video game. Being one of the Nerdy Intellectuals I mentioned earlier, I generally like libraries anyway—I love the clean, heady musk of ink and paper and carpet glue. But I’d never been exhilarated in a library before. I was even glad to see Ike.

We all nodded our hellos, but I didn’t look at Kevin, because I was thinking about what Min had said two days earlier, about him maybe liking me.

“Sorry about yesterday at lunch,” Terese said, whispering.

Kevin and Ike mumbled their apologies too.

“It wasn’t you guys’ fault,” I whispered back, and Min nodded. “It was no one’s fault.”

“Did your friends say anything?” Min asked Terese.

“Yeah,” she said. “They wondered what was up.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“That we were thinking about starting a club.” She shrugged. “I’m a pretty good liar.”

“What kind of club?” I said.

“I didn’t say. I just changed the subject.” So I wasn’t the only one who avoided questions by changing the subject. Maybe this was another thing we all had in common.

“This is so stupid!” Ike said. “We shouldn’t have to hide like this, like political dissidents or whatever. Why can’t we be seen together like normal people?”

As if in answer, Candy Moon walked by the end of the aisle. I thought I saw her slowing down ever so slightly. Suddenly, this didn’t seem like such a good meeting place after all. Five people in the same aisle was a pretty big coincidence.

“Damn,” Kevin said, whispering again. “I think I had a bad idea, our coming here.”

This meeting had been Kevin’s idea? But why hadn’t he E-mailed me directly? Did it mean Min was wrong, and Kevin didn’t like me after all? Or did it mean just the opposite, that Min was right and he
did
like me, but that he was too shy to do anything about it? (Kevin Land shy? That was a laugh.)

“What we need,” Min spoke softly, “is someplace to meet where no one’ll see us.”

“We could go back to the pizza place,” Ike said. “We could meet there after school.”

“No,” Terese said. “Sooner or later, someone’ll see us. It’s too close to school. The team goes there for pizza.”

“Then some other restaurant,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “Most nights, I got practice. It’d have to be close by. But like Terese said, if it’s close to campus, we’re gonna run into someone.”

“The woods?” Terese said. There was this big forested area on the other side of the track field.

“Too cold and wet,” Ike said.

“Wait a minute,” Min said suddenly. “What Terese said. Why not start a real club?”

“Huh?” I said.

“You know,” she said. “An after-school club. Don’t they let you use a classroom? I mean, if you fill out the right forms?”

“What kind of club?” Terese said. She sounded suspicious. “You mean like a gay-straight alliance?” I’d heard about gay-straight alliances at other schools. Other big-city schools, that is. There were no gay-straight alliances in our town, maybe not even in our entire state, and there weren’t going to be any anytime soon. If Reverend Blowhard could get so worked up over something as innocent as a teacher talking about contraceptives in a health class, it wasn’t hard to imagine what he and his cadre of concerned parents would do over the existence of a gay-straight alliance at the local high school. The mushroom cloud would be visible for miles around.

“Well,” Min said, “we don’t need to tell anyone that’s what kind of club it is. We’ll just say it’s a club.”

“You have to,” Ike said. “You have to say exactly what you are. They can’t deny any club, not as long as you follow all the rules. My friends and me were going to start an Earth First! chapter, and Rall wasn’t going to let us.” (Remember, Mr. Rall was the school principal.) “But then Gladstein—he was our faculty advisor—he told Rall we’d sue if he didn’t let us. Oh yeah, and you have to have a faculty advisor too.”

No one said anything. We just thought about all the new information.

“Well, the first part is easy,” I said. “We just make something up. We’ll tell them it’s a chess club when it’s really just us.”

“But what about the faculty advisor?” Ike said. “I mean, they’d be right there with us.”

“Mr. Kephart,” Min said.

We all looked at her.

“He’s the most uninvolved teacher in the whole school! Two fifty-one in the afternoon, he’s gone. If we ask him to be our advisor, the last we’ll see of him is when he signs our application form.”

“You think he’ll do it?” Terese said.

“He will if I tell him he doesn’t have to come to any of the meetings.”

I felt a smile breaking out on my face. But at the same time, I saw movement at the end of the aisle. I turned to see Heather Chen staring right at us. Terese, Min, and I all snatched books from the shelves. It looked incredibly phony and probably made us look even more suspicious in Heather’s eyes. When I looked back, she was gone.

“It’s time to wrap this thing up,” Min whispered, quieter than ever. “Are we all agreed about starting a club?”

“Hold on.” Ike was barely whispering too. “There’s still one more problem. If we start a club, it has to be open to every student in the school. That’s the policy.”

“Too bad we
can’t
say it’s a gay club,” Terese said. “That’d keep everyone away.” It was a joke, but it didn’t sound like one, because she sounded so bitter.

Kevin hadn’t said anything in a while, and I figured it was because he’d changed his mind and now he didn’t want anything to do with this club thing. Or me.

So I was surprised when his face suddenly lit up, and he whispered, “I got it! We just choose a club that’s so boring, nobody would ever in a million years join it!” He thought for a second. “We could call it the Geography Club!”

We all considered this. This time, I saw smiles break out all around.

The Geography Club, I thought. No high school students in their right minds would ever join that.

In other words, it was perfect!

“Trish Baskin’s hot for you,” Gunnar said to me.

It was the following Saturday, and Gunnar and I were playing racquetball on a court at the Y. I didn’t completely suck at racquetball (that’s my modest way of saying I was really pretty good). But Gunnar had said what he’d said about Trish Baskin right before his serve, so I had to wait until we finished the rally to ask him what the hell he meant. Of course, he won the point, but only because I was distracted.

“What?” I said.

“What what?” he said.

“What about Trish Baskin?” Our voices were echoing in the close confines of the brightly lit court.

“She does,” Gunnar said. “I heard it from someone who knows. You like her?”

Like
her? I thought. I barely even
knew
her. Oh, and then there was the small matter of my being queer as a three-dollar bill.

“She’s okay,” I said. She’d been in my geometry class the year before. She was sort of the mousy type, with this whispery voice and narrow shoulders and a streaked haircut that she’d probably had to be talked into getting. “Go ahead and serve.”

“Well, she really likes you,” Gunnar said, right before hitting the ball again. But I wasn’t distracted this time, so I pounded it right past him and took back the serve.

We kept playing, and I noticed that Gunnar seemed quiet. Unlike Min, he wasn’t particularly competitive, so I doubted he was thinking about the game. No, something else was going on here.

“Hey,” he said a few minutes later, when he won back the serve.

I faced him, wiping my face with the sweat towel that had been hanging from my pocket.

He said, “Remember what we talked about a couple of weeks ago?”

I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. “What do you mean?”

“You know. About my getting a girlfriend?”

Now I remembered. But he’d talked about that a zillion times before, so I still wasn’t exactly sure where he was going with this.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Well, I think I got one. A girlfriend, I mean.”

“Yeah? That’s great! Who is it? Why didn’t you tell me?” I was genuinely happy for him, in part because I wouldn’t have to listen to him moan on and on about not having a girlfriend anymore.

“Kimberly Peterson.”

“Gunnar, that’s fantastic!” I said. “I’m really happy for you.” I’d never actually spoken to Kimberly, but I’d seen her around school. She had long blond hair. That was about all I remembered, but keep in mind I don’t exactly have a photographic memory when it comes to girls.

“Well, she’s not really my girlfriend yet,” Gunnar said. “But she did agree to go out with me.”

“Well…” I tried to think of something positive to say. “I’m sure she’ll like you once she gets to know you. Then she
will
be your girlfriend.”

“Yeah,” Gunnar said, tight-lipped, and I knew there was something he still wasn’t telling me. Whatever it was, I had a bad feeling about it.

“Go ahead and serve,” I said, and he did. I won the rally, but it was just plain luck. Now we were both distracted.

“Trish Baskin’s
really
hot for you,” Gunnar said. “She’s friends with Kimberly. That’s who told me.”

I faced him. “Gunnar. What’s going on?”

He was suddenly fascinated by the strings on his racquet. “Remember when we talked about my getting a girlfriend?”

I nodded.

“And remember when you promised you’d do anything to help me out?”

I nodded again, even though I didn’t remember promising to do
anything
exactly.

“Well, Kimberly did agree to go out with me. But only on one condition.”

“Oh,” I said, and instantly I knew what was going on. “Gunnar,
no
!”

“Russ, why not? It’d only be one date!” Kimberly had agreed to go out with Gunnar only if I agreed to go out with her friend Trish, in case you haven’t figured that out already.

“Gunnar!” My voice really echoed. I hadn’t meant to yell.

“You said you’d do anything to help me!”

I was about to tell him exactly what I was thinking—that I hadn’t said I’d do “anything” to help him. And even if I had, this wasn’t what I’d meant! I’d meant driving with him to the mall so he could pick out a tux for the prom.

“Please, Russ. You know how important this is to me. Besides, it’s just one date. What’s the big deal?”

The big deal was I wanted to be dating Kevin Land! But I couldn’t tell Gunnar that. Of course, putting up a big fuss about one little date with Trish Baskin was the next best thing to telling him. It was exactly the sort of thing that would make him suspicious.

I sighed. “It’s a double, right? You and Kimberly and me and Trish?”

“Definitely!”

“When? Next weekend?”

Gunnar nodded. “Saturday.”

I hesitated a second longer, just to make him squirm a little. Then I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Oh, thank God!” he said, far more relieved than he should’ve been.

“Gunnar,” I said.

He still couldn’t keep his eyes off those strings. “Yeah?”

“You already told Kimberly I’d do it, didn’t you?”

He looked up at me at last, a tiny smile on his lips. “Maybe.”

“Gunnar!”

But at least he had the decency to look properly ashamed about it, so I decided to let it slide.

“A date with a girl, huh?” Min said the next day, when I met her for a walk in the park. “That should be one hot and heavy evening.”

“It sure wasn’t my idea,” I said. “You know her?”

“Trish? No. But I went to camp with Kimberly when I was eight. She used to eat paste, if that’s any help. What does Gunnar like about her?”

“The fact that she has two X chromosomes.” Min knew how much Gunnar wanted a girlfriend, and she laughed at my joke, which always made me feel good. You had to be pretty smart to make Min laugh.

“So,” I said. “You excited about the Geography Club?”

“Yeah,” Min said. But I noticed she’d suddenly stopped laughing, or even smiling.

“Where do you want to walk?” Min said, looking out over the hills of grass and bare trees. Winter was almost over, but there was a tinge in the breeze that hinted of a chill yet to come, like the smell of gunpowder in the air the week before the Fourth of July. The ground beneath our feet was cold and hard.

“Let’s head for the Children’s Peace Park,” I said. This was a little garden on the other side of the park. There were shrubs and flowers, and in the middle of it all, there were these six painted wooden cutouts of the children of the world all holding hands. It was extremely stupid, but they’d put it up years before, when the Olympic torch had passed through town.

“What’s up?” I said as we walked.

“Nothing,” she said. She shrugged. “Terese.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. It’s stupid. It’s just…” She shivered, pulling her coat tighter around her neck. Min was chilly. “We got together last night at our warehouse.”

“Yeah?”

“And things felt different.”

I looked over at her. “What do you mean?”

She thought for a second. “Remember how I said Terese and I get together only in that warehouse?” I nodded. “No one ever saw us together, no one even knew about us. When we were together, it always felt like our own little world. This perfect, special place that only we could get to. It was like it wasn’t quite real.”