Geography Club (9 page)

“People are always talking about their families,” Belinda said. “How they all went out to Chuck E. Cheese for pizza, or how they just got back from their latest trip to Disneyland. The whole world has to tell me over and over again how normal they are, and how different they are from me. And I have to just sit there and listen, because no one wants to hear the truth, that my family has never been to Disneyland and never will go.” Belinda looked directly at me. “So I know what you mean when you talk about people always shoving something in your face. And I know what it’s like to have to hide.”

I’d been right. Belinda wasn’t being quirky like Gunnar. She was answering Min’s question. She was just going about it in a roundabout way.

I stared at Belinda. She had seemed bright and bubbly before, but she didn’t now. The loud clothes and the smiley-face earrings? They were just part of an act she put on. In other words, Belinda had something else in common with the rest of us. She was a good liar.

Now Belinda looked directly at Min. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone about your club. And I’ll leave you alone. I won’t be comin’ back.” She turned for the door.

“Wait,” I said, and she stopped.

I glanced at the others, and we held a conversation with our eyes. The Geography Club wasn’t really about being gay, we all seemed to agree. It was ultimately about something else, some sense of being an outsider, a vagabond, with no place to call home. Whatever it was about, Belinda obviously qualified as a member.

“You want to stay?” I said to Belinda.

Belinda looked confused. “But I’m straight.”

“We’re an after-school club,” Kevin said. “We’re not supposed to discriminate.”

Belinda cocked her head. “You really don’t care?”

“Well,” Min said, “don’t expect us to spend much time talking about geography.”

Belinda giggled. “Damn! I’m a token straight!” Her laughter, which had been so annoying the week before, now had a musical ring to it. It was contagious too, because the rest of us joined in.

And that was how the all-gay Geography Club got its first straight member.

That Friday, I had my first baseball game. Coach put me in left field, which, if you know anything about baseball, isn’t exactly where they put the star player. But I was new, and I didn’t want the responsibility of a more important position anyway (unlike Kevin, who played first base). Way out in left field, there was only so much damage I could do, which may not have been the attitude of a winner, but it was my attitude in baseball, so there you go. Still, I did manage to catch a couple of fly balls, even if I fumbled a couple too.

My first time up at bat, I was just praying I wouldn’t strike out. I did manage to hit the damn ball, and even made it to second base before our next batter hit a pop fly, and that ended our time at bat.

In high school baseball, you only play seven innings, and by the time we reached the top of the last one, I was actually kind of having fun. It was now officially spring, and the sun was officially shining, and I’d decided that baseball wasn’t nearly as boring when you’re playing it as when you’re watching it. Best of all, I hadn’t made a complete fool out of myself all game long. (The secret to happiness in life: low expectations.)

By the bottom of the seventh inning, we were behind six to eight when it came my turn to bat. This was exactly the kind of pressure I didn’t want. We only had one out, so my striking out now wouldn’t technically lose us the game. But it wouldn’t win me any new friends either.

“Come on, Russel!” Kevin shouted as I grabbed a bat and helmet and did my best saunter up to the plate. “Outta the park!” Coach and the other guys on the team probably yelled out encouraging things too, but I wasn’t really listening to them.

I took a couple of practice swings and stared out at the pitcher. He looked clean-cut and wholesome, but there was determination in his eyes, like he had dedicated himself to the principles of hot dogs, apple pie, and striking me out. Still, Kevin had told me that baseball was as much a psychological game as a physical one, and that intimidating the pitcher with a confident stare was an important part of playing.

The first pitch was way wide, but like an idiot, I swung anyway, and like a clumsy idiot, I even stumbled a little. My stare may have been intimidating, but my depth perception just plain sucked.

“Eye on the ball!” Kevin called. “Eye on the ball!”

The next pitch was wide too. I was all set to swing again, but at the last second, I pulled back, and I heard the umpire shout “Ball!” When I looked back at the pitcher’s eyes, I could suddenly see that these wide pitches were no accident. He saw that I was green, and he was trying to lure me into hitting bad balls. But now I saw through him. I knew what he was up to. Of course, he saw through me too, and he knew that I knew, which meant the end of the bad balls. But there was really something to this staring-the-pitcher-in-the-eye thing.

“Atta boy!” Kevin called. “Good eye, good eye!”

I scanned the bases. We had a guy on first and a guy on third. If I struck out, I’d be helping to cost us the game. But if I hit a home run, well, two guys plus me equals three, and that would actually win the game.

And if elephants laid eggs, it’d take sixteen people to eat a three-egg omelette.

I stepped up to the plate again, waited for the pitcher’s windup, and then promptly got my second strike. More proof of the power of negative thinking.

“Sokay!” Kevin said encouragingly. “It only takes one hit!”

Okay, I thought. No more negative thoughts. This was too important. It was one of those defining, do-or-die moments in life. Not just do-or-die for the game. It was do-or-die for Kevin and me too. If I struck out now, I’d be too embarrassed to ever show my face around him again.

The pitcher threw the ball.

I swung.

And what do you know? My bat connected with the baseball exactly the way that eraser had connected with that Ping-Pong ball back when the Geography Club had been playing classroom baseball. There was a very clean, very satisfying
crack!
and the ball soared up, up, up, and out—as in out of the ballpark.

Yes, I actually hit a home run. I also won us the game. The crowd didn’t exactly roar—there were only fifty or so spectators, and only about thirty-five of them were rooting for the home team. But thirty-five people can make quite a bit of noise, especially when they’re shouting and clapping and carrying on like ten-year-olds at an after-school birthday party.

For a second, I just stood there gaping, like this was all some kind of mistake. (There was nothing I could do that was so great that I couldn’t somehow make it look stupid.)

But then I heard Kevin’s voice cut through the din. “Go!” he said. “Run the bases!”

So I ran the bases—it was really more of a jog. I went from first to second to third before finally heading for home, where the whole team was jumping up and down and shouting, and where Kevin was waiting for me with his patented grin, ready to pound me on the back. People cheered me all the while. I’d never been cheered for anything before, and it felt good. (Okay, it felt great!)

None of this seemed like it was happening in slow motion, but you can imagine it that way if you want. It makes a much better picture that way. I wish it
had
been in slow motion, though. I could have enjoyed the glory a little longer. And it would have been that much longer before all the horrible things that happened in the days that followed.

“Middlebrooooook!”
Ramone said to me in the locker room after the game. “Way to
smack
it!”

The baseball team was supposedly getting undressed so we could all shower and go home. But what everyone was really doing was whooping it up and telling me how great I was for winning the game. So far, the other guys on the team had patted, slapped, prodded, and hoisted me—pretty much everything one guy could do to another guy in a public place and not get arrested.

“That was
excellent
, Middlebrook!” Nate said. “Right over those dickheads!”

I felt like the winner of a beauty pageant, with all the other contestants gathering around me and showering me with bouquets at the end of the competition. (This probably isn’t the butchest comparison, but it was the way I felt, so what can you do?)

“How’d you hit it like that?” Jarred asked me. “Huh, Middlebrook?”

“Shoot, that was easy,” I said. “I just pretended the ball was the pitcher’s head!” I was no fool. I knew what sort of material would work on a crowd like this.

Sure enough, Jarred and everyone else laughed. I was laughing now too, and it was at that exact moment that something incredible occurred to me.

I was actually enjoying myself.

Enjoying myself? I had never
enjoyed
myself in the boys’ locker room before! Always before, it had felt like I was a spy in hostile territory, and it was only a matter of time until I was exposed (see chapter one, section one). But now here I was, laughing and joking with the best of them. Sure, it was a little distracting that half the guys were naked or waltzing around in just their jockstraps. I also knew most of these guys were boneheads who couldn’t talk their way out of a paper bag.

But at the same time, I felt this strange sense of camaraderie. It was as if I’d never even been in this locker room before. As if all my life, I’d been dressing and undressing in the cold hallway outside, only overhearing little bits of the conversation. But now my membership had been accepted, and I’d been welcomed inside. Plus, there was full-frontal male nudity.

I looked at Kevin, undressing over by our lockers. He winked at me. Then he grabbed a towel and turned for the showers, his dimpled ass flexing as he went. He was the only guy on the team who hadn’t hugged me since the game had ended. I didn’t mind. We’d make up for it later.

The next day, Saturday, I met Gunnar for a game of racquetball. In the YMCA locker room, I told him about my victory in the baseball game.

“That’s fantastic!” he said to me. “I had no idea you were such a great baseball player! But I guess I should’ve known, right? I mean, you always beat me in racquetball, don’t you? And bowling—you beat me in that too. And croquet! No, wait, sometimes I beat you in croquet. That and putt-putt. Or do you beat me in putt-putt? I just wish I could’ve come to your game. I’ll come to the next game, okay? Is that all right? Can I come to the next game? Wow, I still can’t believe you won the game like that; that’s so fantastic!”

Gunnar was very happy for me. Too happy. Something was up.

“What?” I said to him.

“What what?” he said innocently. He said this a lot lately, and it was starting to piss me off.

“You want something from me. You want me to go out with Trish again, don’t you?”

“Why?” Gunnar said, just a little too quickly. “Do you
want
to go out with her? Because I think I might be able to arrange that. I mean, I could call Kimberly and see what she says, but I’m not making any promises.” I rolled my eyes. Gunnar trying to not sound eager about my going out with Trish came across even phonier than his being so incredibly excited about my winning the baseball game.

So Trish wanted to go out with me yet again. And that meant she thought when I’d said I didn’t want to have sex with her, I’d only meant I didn’t want to have sex with her
yet
.

“No,” I said to Gunnar, as firmly as I could to someone who wasn’t a child. “I don’t want to go out with Trish again.”

“Really? Because I thought we had a pretty good—”

“No!” I looked Gunnar straight in the eye. “I really don’t want to go out with Trish.”

“But Kimberly—”

“Look!” I said. “The answer is no!”

We finished dressing for our game in a frigid silence. Then we walked to the racquetball court in that same cold hush.

Once inside the court, Gunnar turned to me and said, “It’s not like I ask you for that many favors.”

“You asked me to go out with Trish twice before, and both times I went. But I’m not doing it a third time.”

Gunnar’s big blue eyes stared at me. “Russ, please.” His voice began to quiver, and for a second, I thought he was going to cry. “I’ll owe you one. A big one. I’ll do anything you want.” I did want to help him—who wants to see a friend in pain? But a third date with Trish Baskin was nonnegotiable, especially since I was starting to think she might have decided a third date would qualify as the “special” time I was waiting for before I had sex.

“Why don’t you just go out with Kimberly alone?” I said. “Why do you always want Trish and me to come along?” I already knew the answer to this question—Kimberly didn’t
want
to go out with Gunnar alone. But I figured if I could get him to finally see this, maybe he wouldn’t want to go out with Kimberly either.

In frustration, Gunnar swung his racquet through the air (dangerously close to my head, I might add). “I don’t
know
!” he said. “Kimberly always just says she wants to double with you and Trish. Maybe she’s just shy.”

I thought, Kimberly
shy?
How could someone as smart as Gunnar possibly believe this?

It was time to be blunt. The truth hurt, but it was also supposed to set you free.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t think Kimberly treats you all that good. I think she’s just going out with you because Trish wants to go out with me.”

Gunnar looked up at me with hatred in his eyes.
“That’s not true!”
The shrillness of his voice echoed down at me from the high ceiling of the court.

“Okay!” I said quickly. I admit I was taken aback. “Okay, it was just an idea.”

“Well, it was a
stupid
one!”

It had been a stupid idea, but not for the reason Gunnar thought. It was stupid, because there was no way someone who wanted a girlfriend as badly as Gunnar did was going to give up so easily, even on someone as thoroughly unattractive as Kimberly Peterson.

“Let’s just play,” I said. “Okay?”

Without another word, he snatched the ball and started hammering away at it. His first five serves were so fast I couldn’t return any of them. When I finally won the serve, he won it right back again. This wasn’t the Gunnar I knew. I’d never seen him be so single-minded about anything in his life.

Toward the end of the game, he whirled on me at last. “Why don’t you want to go out with Trish anyway?”

“What?” I said.

“What’s the problem? Don’t you think she’s nice?”

“She’s okay.”

“Don’t you think she’s good-looking?”

“No, she’s okay.”

“Then what? What’s the real reason?” The boldness still hadn’t left his eyes.

I didn’t have an answer, at least not one for him.

“It’s just not there,” I said at last. “I don’t feel anything for her.”

“For her, huh? That’s funny. ’Cause I don’t remember you feeling anything for anyone else either.”

I really didn’t like where this conversation was heading. All I could think to say was “What?”

“What
what?
” Gunnar said. “I’m just saying I can’t remember you ever being interested in
any
girl.”

Suddenly, I was sweating, but not from the racquetball. This was the cold, clammy sweat of fear. Exactly what was Gunnar saying? What did he know, and how long had he known it?

“Did Trish say something?” I said. It
was
Trish—it had to be! But if she was telling people I was gay, why would she want to go out with me again?

“Like what?” Gunnar said innocently—too innocently. “It just seems funny. I mean, a big baseball star like you, but you don’t have a girlfriend? Don’t you think that’s funny? I think people might think that’s funny.”

“Okay!” I shouted, and it echoed too, just as shrilly as Gunnar’s voice had a minute before.

“Okay,’ what?” Gunnar said.

I lowered my voice. “I’ll go out with Trish again. Okay? That’s what you want, right? I’ll go out with her. Anytime you say. Let’s just finish the game, okay?”

Gunnar walked back to the serve line, and we did finish that game. I hope it goes without saying that he whipped my ass.

The following Monday, the whole school knew I had won the baseball game. I wasn’t sure
how
everyone knew—there had only been thirty-five people at the game. True, there was an article about it in the
Goodkind Gazette
, but the whole school was back to not reading the school newspaper, so I knew no one had found out about me there. But somehow word had got out. Now people I had never spoken to before, people who I didn’t even think knew who I was, called out my name in the hallways. Two times during the day, groups of people actually fell silent as I walked by. (It is impossible not to feel incredibly flattered by this.) Even some teachers, who you’d expect to be above this kind of thing, had a little glint in their eyes when they talked to me. And when I ended up being fifty cents short for my food in the cafeteria lunch line, the cashier just winked at me and sent me on my way.

A week earlier, I might’ve been freaked out by all this attention, but I’d already become an old hand at the fame game, so I took it all in stride.

But that afternoon after baseball practice, I realized I’d left a book back in my locker. So before heading for my bike, I veered back to the main building.

The front doors to the school weren’t locked yet, but the halls were long since empty, and most of the lights had been turned off. The concrete floors, which had already been mopped, smelled of ammonia and dirt.

I started down the hallway and heard voices coming from around the corner. Ordinarily, hearing voices in the deserted hallways after school might have made me uneasy—especially loud, obnoxious, male voices. I might even have gone a roundabout way just to avoid running into whoever it was. But these days, I owned this school. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have anything to be afraid of.

I rounded that corner and found myself face-to-face with Jarred and Nolan, two guys from the baseball team. Coach had kept me and a few other guys a little later at practice to help us with our hitting, so everyone else had got out early. Now Jarred and Nolan were standing at the base of the stairway to the second floor, which was exactly where I needed to go.

“Yo, Middlebrook!” Nolan said. “’Sup?”

“Hey,” I said. “Forgot a book.” Knowing these guys were both on the baseball team, I felt myself relax a little. I guess I hadn’t been quite as comfortable rounding that corner as I’d thought.

“Hey,” Jarred said, “you go out with Trish Baskin, right?”

“What?” I said. “Oh yeah.” I
did
go out with Trish Baskin, even if it was against my will. But so much for my feeling relaxed.

“She’s pretty hot,” Jarred said, and I wasn’t sure about the protocol here. Should I say thanks or what?

“What ’bout her friend Kimberly?” Nolan said, more to Jarred than to me. Then he laughed and made the Hannibal Lecter lip-smacking sound from that movie
The Silence of the Lambs
.

“Yeah,” I said, and I hope I don’t need to tell you what I was thinking here. “Well,” I added, “later.”

I stepped between Jarred and Nolan and put a foot on the bottom stair, and everything would’ve been just fine if, just then, Brian Bund hadn’t suddenly appeared in the bend in the stairway above me. My first thought was, What the hell is Brian doing here at school this long after classes? But he had a stack of books in his arms—of course, he was carrying them like a girl—so I decided he must have been coming from the library, which would have just closed for the afternoon.

My second thought was, Please don’t let Jarred and Nolan see him! It was just dark enough that if they didn’t look up, they might not notice he was there, especially if Brian was smart enough not to move.

But then Jarred looked at me and glanced up at where I was looking.

“Brian!” he said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “How ya
doin’
?” Now it was too late. Brian had been spotted.

Brian didn’t move a muscle.

“What’s wrong?” Nolan said, with fake innocence. “Don’t you wanna come down?”

Brian thought for a second, considering his options. The only other stairway from the second floor was on the other side of the building. And he had to know that turning around and running now might do him more harm than good.

“Come on,” Nolan coaxed. “We won’t hurt you.”

Brian hesitated a second longer, then tentatively stepped down the stairs until he was just a couple of feet above us. But of course, the closer Brian got to the bottom, the taller Jarred and Nolan stood, and the more they moved to the middle of the steps. It didn’t help that I was standing between them, so the three of us were effectively blocking his exit.

“Would you look at him?” Nolan said to Jarred, both of them laughing. “How scared he looks?” Brian
did
look scared. Now that he’d moved into the light, we could see the wide-eyed, flushed expression on his face, but to me, it was anything but funny.

Brian Bund had always been treated like crap at our school. But ever since Ms. Toles had given that stupid interview to the school newspaper, everyone really had decided that he was the gay kid she was talking about. Since then, people had been treating Brian even worse. At first, I’d assumed all this extra teasing would eventually fade, like an overplayed pop song. But everyone had turned this song into the school anthem, and now they played it every chance they got. If I’d been Brian, I would have looked wary too.