Geography Club (6 page)

“Like Gunnar and me. We met in the fourth grade.”

“She’s really not that bad once you get to know her.”

I had a mouthful of food, but I spoke up anyway. “What makes you think I think she’s bad?”

Trish just smiled knowingly. “I can tell.” Maybe I hadn’t been as neutral as I’d thought when I’d said that about Kimberly being a lot of fun. Or maybe Trish was just perceptive.

“I’m glad you came tonight,” Trish said.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah. I liked when we had that class together last year. I liked talking to you.”

“Yeah? Me too.” The truth was, I barely remembered talking to her, and I sure hoped Trish wasn’t so perceptive that she could see this too.

Suddenly, Kimberly appeared, desperate for us to join her in a game of House of the Dead II.

There’s not too much more to tell about the date. We finished eating, then played video games, then ate some more. By then, Kimberly was feeling kind of sick, so Gunnar and I drove the girls home, and he walked Kimberly to the front door, and I said good-bye to Trish at the car. This was so we could all kiss each other good night and not have it seem like some kind of orgy.

“Thanks,” I said to Trish, standing in the glare of a streetlight that totally blotted out the moon. “I really had a good time.”

“Yeah,” Trish said, sidling closer. “Me too.”

Then we kissed. Her face was in shadow, so our mouths kind of missed at first. But then we made contact. Her lips were warm and squishy, like overcooked asparagus, and it freaked me out a little. But at least there were no tongues involved.

Trish pulled away first. “Call me?” she said.

“Definitely,” I said. You weren’t actually supposed to tell the truth here, were you?

Then she was running up to the front porch, crossing paths with Gunnar, who was on his way back to the car.

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t the best date in the world. But at least this stupid thing with Trish was over and done with.

Or so I thought.

That Monday morning, I walked into school and was greeted by the ring of echoing voices, the smell of perfume and soda pop, and the sight of people standing around in tight little clusters reading copies of the
Goodkind Gazette.

Wait a minute, I thought. Something about this picture was wrong. No one
ever
read the school newspaper.

What was worse, all around me, people weren’t just talking; they were buzzing with excitement. Here it was before eight o’clock on a Monday morning, and people were acting like it was afternoon on the last day before Christmas vacation. But I couldn’t make out anything that anyone was saying—it was just one long, reverberating rumble.

I glanced at the closest group of people. Sure enough, two of them were reading an article on the front page of the
Goodkind Gazette.
Both of them looked absolutely enraptured by what they were reading, like it revealed both the secrets of the universe and the answers to this afternoon’s biology test. Everyone else must have already read the article, because they were all yammering on, sometimes making these wild gestures to the newspaper itself.

I still couldn’t make out what was being said, but suddenly, for no reason I can explain, one word happened to rise above the din.

“Banana,” said Tad Brickle.

People were excited about an article in the
Goodkind Gazette
about a banana? This was getting stranger and stranger.

I drifted closer to the closest cluster of people and tried to read the headline of the article over the shoulder of Brittany Vanderberg. But just then she turned the page to where the article continued on page two.

Then I overheard another word.

“Toles,” said Monica Melnacht.

Toles? I thought. As in Ms. Toles, the health teacher? For some reason, this made me nervous.

I turned for a nearby newspaper dispenser, but it was empty. That was a first too.

This is just stupid, I thought. I should just walk up and ask someone what all the commotion is about.

That’s when I heard Zack Ward say the word “gay.”

Gay? People were reading about something “gay” in the school newspaper? I didn’t like the sound of that at all!

I hurried to Min’s locker, hoping she could fill me in.

“What’s going on?” I said when I found her.

She glanced around us in the hallway, seeing if the coast was clear. “We’re screwed,” she said under her breath. “That’s what’s going on.”

“Who is?”

“The Geography Club.” I hadn’t thought I could get any more tense, but I did just then.

“What?” I said. “
Why?
”

She pulled a copy of the newspaper from her locker and presented it to me like a teacher handing me a pop quiz. “Read it,” she said.

I didn’t want to read it. I wanted Min to tell me what was going on!

“Just tell me!” I said.

“Ms. Toles gave an interview to the school paper.”

So what if the health teacher gave an interview to the
Goodkind Gazette
? What could that possibly have to do with the Geography Club?

“So?” I said. I sounded impatient, but the truth was, now I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know.

“So
read
it!” Now Min sounded impatient too.

I snatched the newspaper from her hand. Min pointed to the article, and I started reading.

The headline was “Health Teacher Speaks Her Mind, Makes Controversy.” Now I know what people mean when they say their heart is in their throat.

It was a profile of Ms. Toles. It talked about her feelings on sex education and how she felt about condom machines in high school bathrooms (she was for them) and “abstinence-only” curriculums (she was against them). It also talked about when she’d put those condoms on that cucumber in class. (“Not one single student complained to me about that,” Ms. Toles said, “and after those classes, three students came up to thank me.” I had to admit these were pretty good points.)

I didn’t need to finish the article to know that Ms. Toles was toast. She’d have been gone by the end of the year with just the cucumber and the condoms. Now with this article in the paper, she’d be gone in a week. I couldn’t help but wonder what in the world she’d been thinking.

But none of this had anything to do with Geography Club, or anything “gay,” and I couldn’t figure out why Min was so upset.

“What?” I said. “I don’t see any—”

“Turn the page,” Min said, “and keep reading!”

I yanked open the page—partly tearing it in the process—and kept reading.

Two paragraphs before the end of the article, I came to a line that made my blood run cold. It was a quote from Ms. Toles.

“‘As a health educator, it’s my job to teach all the students,’ Toles said.

“According to Toles, that even includes gay students. ‘There are gay and lesbian students at every high school in town, including ours,’ Toles said. ‘Just last week, I talked to one of them about a support group for gay teens.’”

Talk about burying the lead! This is what everyone had been chattering about in the hallways. This was also why Min was so upset. Someone had spilled the beans about the Geography Club!

Terese was pissed. “All right!” she demanded. “Who talked?”

It was that same Monday after school, at an emergency meeting of the Geography Club. Terese wasn’t the only one angry about that article on Ms. Toles. No one had even said hello. The five of us had just stomped into the classroom and gathered in a circle, glowering at each other like competitors in a game of tag-team wrestling.

When no one stepped forward to admit guilt, Terese said,
“Well?”
She meant business, but then so did everyone else.

“It wasn’t me,” I said, if only because we needed to start the ball rolling somehow.

“Terese,” Min said, “you know it wasn’t me.”

Ike shook his head. “I never even talked to Toles before.”

Terese whirled on Kevin. “Then it had to be—!”

Kevin held up his hands and sort of ducked, like he thought Terese was going to hit him. “Wait a minute!” Kevin said. “It wasn’t me either!”

“Then
who
?” Terese said.

We were back to standing there scowling at each other like a pack of fur-bristled wolves.

Then something occurred to me. “Terese?” I said.

Now she turned on me.
“What?”

“It’s just that you’re the only one who didn’t—”

She gave me one seriously droll look. “No! It wasn’t me either.”

Min sat down at one of the desks. She looked as confused as I felt. Ike started pacing. And Kevin had slipped a baseball from his backpack and was squeezing it and tossing it ever so lightly into the air. I’d never seen him do this before, but I knew right away that this was a nervous habit. (Even upset like I was, I found this endearing.)

“It really wasn’t anyone here?” Terese said.

“It wasn’t me,” Min said.

“Or me,” I said.

“Or me,” Kevin said.

“It wasn’t me,” Ike said.

I looked from person to person, at the droop in their shoulders and the hangdog expressions on their faces. I believed them. Suddenly, I was certain that no one in that room had squealed. Everyone else was beginning to believe it too. We’d already said too much of the truth to each other to start lying now. As we kept looking back and forth at each other, I could feel the tension start to drain from the room.

“Then who?” Terese said quietly.

Min looked up suddenly. “Well, who says it was one of us? There are eight hundred students at this school. There have to be more than five gay people. Maybe it was one of them.”

“Oh yeah!” Terese said. “And they just happen to be starting a gay support group at the same time we are?”

“Hold on,” I said. “Toles didn’t actually say they were starting a gay support group. She just said they talked about a support group for gay teens.”

We all thought about this for a second.

“So no one talked,” Terese said. She sounded both grateful and relieved.

“Pretty bad timing, though,” Ike said. “I mean, with our club and everything. Everyone’s talking about the gay club and who the gay kid might be.”

“So what?” Min said suddenly. “We don’t have anything to worry about. I mean, no one here’s going to talk, so how could anyone find out? We’re the Geography Club. It’s official! Why would anyone ever suspect us?”

We all thought about this too. It did make some sense.

“People already think they know who the gay kid is,” Ike said. “My friends do anyway.”

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Mine too.”

“Me too,” Terese said.

“I’ve been hearing things,” Min said.

“Who do people think it is?” I said, as if I didn’t know.

Sure enough, Ike said, “Brian.”

Kevin said, “Brian.”

Terese said, “Brian.”

And Min said, “Brian.”

I thought, Who says the different cliques and groups at our school don’t have anything in common? They all seemed pretty united in their hatred of Brian Bund. The poor kid. Like he really needed people to be even more evil to him.

“So no one’s even going to suspect us?” Terese said, and Min nodded.

We were quiet a second longer, then Kevin said, “Docious!” This was short for “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” from that movie
Mary Poppins
, and it’s an example of my generation’s famous ironic wit. It’s sort of an all-purpose word at our school that can mean something is really good (“hot damn!”) or really bad (“holy shit!”). Kevin just meant he was glad that nothing bad had happened to the Geography Club.

In fact, Kevin was so glad, he wasn’t nervously flipping his baseball anymore. Now he was happily tossing it high into the air. But on the way down, he misjudged his catch and accidentally tipped the ball away from his body. I happened to be standing next to him, so I reached out and snatched the baseball just before it hit the ground.

“Good catch!” Kevin said as I tossed him back the ball. “You ever think about joining the baseball team?”

I hadn’t ever thought about it. But I did now.

I was surprised to see that Gunnar had waited for me during the meeting of the Geography Club. I found him reading on the grass by the bike racks. This was dedication, since it was still pretty cold outside. Either that, or he wanted something from me.

“Hey,” he said, standing and packing his book away. “Where you been?”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. I joined a club. Normally, our meetings are Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we had a special meeting today.”

“What kind of club?”

This was the question I’d been dreading from Gunnar for days. If anyone in our whole school would be interested in joining something called the Geography Club, it would be Gunnar. He was just that strange.

“It’s called the Geography Club,” I told him. “But it’s really boring. I’m just doing it to have something to put on college applications.”

“Oh.” I expected him to ask me questions about it, but he didn’t. “So, you ready to ride?”

“Yeah, sure.” I started unlocking my bike, but what I really wanted to do was jump up and knock my heels together and shout, “Gunnar doesn’t want to join the Geography Club!”

We climbed on our bikes and started for home.

“So,” Gunnar said. “You have a good time on Saturday?”

It took me a second to realize he was talking about my date with Trish. Since the date had ended, I’d given Trish pretty much no thought whatsoever.

“Yeah,” I said. “Trish is nice.” I knew Gunnar had to feel pretty bad about his date with Kimberly. There was no reason to make him feel worse for having set me up with Trish. Besides, my date really hadn’t been that bad. “Sorry it didn’t work out with you and Kimberly,” I said.

“Who says it didn’t work out?” Gunnar said. He sounded offended.

I had to look at him to see if he was making a joke. It looked like he really
was
offended.

“What?” I said.

“What what? What makes you think it didn’t work out with Kimberly?”

“Well, I…” I thought back on what Gunnar and I had talked about on Saturday night after we’d dropped off the girls. Neither of us had ever said outright that his date with Kimberly had been a complete and utter disaster. But Kimberly had been such a bitch in general, and she’d seemed so indifferent to Gunnar all night long, that I’d just assumed he knew it had been a disaster. The only reason I hadn’t said anything Saturday night was because I didn’t want to make him feel any more miserable than I assumed he already did.

“What are you saying?” I said. “You still like Kimberly?”

“Sure! She likes me too. We talked today in free period. She wants to go out again this weekend.”

“What?” I knew it was rude to sound so shocked, but I couldn’t help myself. I just couldn’t believe that Kimberly actually wanted to go out with Gunnar again. Was he making this up?

“You sound surprised,” Gunnar said.

I tried to pretend that the astonishment in my voice was just me huffing from riding my bike. “No,” I said. “No! That’s great. I mean, you like her, right?”

“You don’t?”

“I didn’t say that!” Why did everyone keep thinking I didn’t like Kimberly? It was true, but why did everyone keep thinking it?

“So she got a little drunk,” Gunnar said. “She was just having fun.”

I was torn. Part of me was happy for Gunnar. I knew how much he wanted a girlfriend. But another part of me thought, God, does it have to be that bitch Kimberly Peterson? She couldn’t possibly end up being any good for him. How could she be? She didn’t even seem to
like
Gunnar. She was probably just using him for something—but what?

“Oh,” I said, because suddenly I knew exactly what she was using him for.

Kimberly may not have liked Gunnar, but Trish liked me. That’s what Kimberly’s second date with Gunnar had to be all about. Trish wanted to go out with me again. Since they knew that Gunnar liked Kimberly—that was pretty screamingly obvious—Kimberly was stringing Gunnar along in hopes he, as my best friend, would use his influence to get me to go out with Trish again. Or maybe Trish just didn’t want to go out alone with me yet—maybe she wanted Kimberly and Gunnar along one more time. Either way, I knew in my gut that my going out with Trish was the only reason Kimberly was willing to go out with Gunnar. If I refused to go on another date with Trish, Kimberly would dump Gunnar’s ass.

“‘Oh,’ what?” Gunnar said.

“It’s just…” I started to say what I was thinking. But then I looked over at the guy on the bike next to me, and I saw the look on his face. He had one of those open, completely vulnerable expressions that made me just know if I said the truth, he would never look quite that innocent ever again.

That’s when I decided he didn’t need to know the truth. Besides, maybe I was wrong. What did I know? Maybe Kimberly did like Gunnar. He did have kind of a geeky charm. I was the first to admit I didn’t know how these crazy straight people did their dating thing. (I didn’t know how we crazy gay people did our dating thing either, but that was a whole other story.)

“Oh, there’s more good news!” Gunnar said, but I already knew what it was: Trish wanted to go out with me again too.

“What?” I said.

“Trish wants to go out with you again too,” Gunnar said. “Kimberly thought we could double again.” He tried to make this sound exciting, but I could hear the worry in his voice, the fear that I was going to put up another big fuss about going out with Trish, just like I had the first time. In other words, on some level, I think even Gunnar knew he was just being used.

“Well?” Gunnar said.

I mustered up the biggest grin I could for my friend. “That sounds great. I’d love to take Trish out again!”

It was just one more little date. How bad could it be?

The next day before school, I met Min by her locker and told her that I had yet another date with Trish Baskin. Without making myself sound too noble, I also told her why.

She smiled in an admiring kind of way. Then she said, “You’re a really nice guy. You know that, Russel? You’re a thoroughly decent guy.”

I blushed a little. Even more than making Min laugh, I liked making her think I was decent. I guess because I thought she was decent too.

I stepped closer to her in the hallway and lowered my voice. “So how’s it going? With Terese, I mean.”

She didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, which I thought was a little weird. She said, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said, “last week in the park you sounded pretty bummed.”

“Oh, that.” She rolled her eyes. “That was just me being stupid.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. We’ve gotten together a couple times since then. Nothing’s changed. Or if it has, it’s better.”

“Really?”

She nodded. This was no brave face she was putting on. She was telling the truth.

“Well, that’s great!” I said.

I thought about all that had happened in the last day or so. Min and Terese were back to being good. It turned out no one had spilled the beans about the Geography Club. And Kevin wanted me to join the baseball team. True, I was gay and I was dating a girl—and one I didn’t particularly like at that. But I was doing it for a friend, so it didn’t seem like such a whopping big deal.

The fact is, things were finally going right, and I couldn’t imagine anything that could possibly change that.

“That’s it, Middlebrook!” Kevin Land said to me. “Now I’m gonna mop the floor with your face!”

It was that afternoon at the Tuesday meeting of the Geography Club and we were playing baseball in Kephart’s classroom. We were using a Ping-Pong ball for a ball and an eraser for a bat. Kevin was pitching, and I was up to bat. It was Kevin and Terese against Ike and Min and me.

“Hey, batter, batter!” Terese intoned. “Hey, batter, batter!”

Kevin pitched, and I swung. There was a very satisfying
thwap
, and the ball went flying up over the desks.

“Run!” Min shouted to me.
“Run!”

I didn’t need to be told. I was already off and running for first base, which happened to be a desk in the front row of the classroom.

“Get it, get it!” Kevin shouted to Terese. “Throw it here!” But it was clacking wildly under the desks in the back of the room, and she was having a hard time pinning it down.

“Go!” Min said to me. “Keep going!”

When I reached first, Terese was still fumbling for the ball, so I took off for second base—another desk.

“Come on!” Ike shouted. “Bring it home!”

Soon I was rounding third, and there was still no Ping-Pong ball in sight.

“Hurry!” Kevin yelled to Terese.
“Hurry!”

“I got it!” Terese said, standing bolt upright. She threw it to Kevin, who snatched it from the air and rushed to meet me at home plate. He crashed into me with the force of a meteor—a meteor with biceps and a six-pack!

“Out!” Kevin said, his arms wrapped tightly around me.

“Safe!” Ike said.

“Out!” Terese said.

“Safe!”
Min said.

“Safe!” I said. “Three against two!”

“Boooooo!” Terese yelled from the back of the classroom. “Cheap call, cheap call!”