M or F? (2 page)

“Just go,” I told her, but I could see she wasn't ready. She looked over in Jeffrey's direction again with this expression on her face like a kid in a toy store with no money.

“Maybe later,” she tried.

“Maybe later he'll be with Astrid,” I said, and then right away, “I'm just kidding,” because she was a little fragile right now, although we both knew I wasn't completely kidding.

I snuck another look, taking Jeffrey in with fresh eyes. I'd noticed him before, just because he was nice to look at, but I'd never really
considered
him. “He
is
cute,” I said to Frannie. “Not necessarily my type, but I can see where you're coming from. And he definitely makes more sense than Ronald McDonald.” That was my nickname for Frannie's last and strangest crush ever: Ron McHauser. The guy played everything-ball, had one gigantic eyebrow, and was only an animal pelt away from looking like a natural history museum display: early Cro-Magnon Jock. Frannie had started the school year with this thing for him that I had never been able to understand. And in fact, she had gone out with him exactly once. They'd gone to Taco Bell (strike one) on their way to seeing some Vin Diesel movie (strike two), where Ron had skipped the popcorn and gone straight for Frannie's crotch. The end.

“I'm going to buy Ron McHauser off of you,” she said. “How much to never mention him again?”

“I'd say one conversation with Jeffrey Osborne would about cover it.”

She rolled her eyes again, in that if-I-didn't-love-you-I'd-hate-you kind of way. At the end of the eye roll, though, she was looking over my shoulder in Astrid and Jeffrey's direction.

“Hm.”

Just one vowel away from “him.”

 

 

Sixth period after lunch Frannie had Latin and I had geometry. Standing at our lockers just before the bell, I gave her an assignment.

“Okay,” I said. “Remember how you made that list—”

“What, the pros and cons of getting gold highlights?” she said, reading my mind. “Not exactly the same thing.”

“Except,” I stressed, “that it helped you decide to go for it.”

Frannie pulled her Latin book out of her locker and slammed the door. “Okay, even for you, that's stretching it a little thin, don't you think?”

I wasn't going to argue. “This time, just make it five good things about Jeffrey. It'll give you a reason to take the next step. And if you can't come up with five things by seventh period, then that should tell you something, too.”

“I barely even know him,” she said again. “It's just a feeling, not an itemized list.”

“Okay, fine,” I told her. “Just don't come whining to me when you're eighty and don't have anyone to squeeze your boobs.”

“Um . . . ew?”

“That's not an answer.”

“Okay, okay, okay. I'll do it.”

“Do what?” Jenn asked, just arriving at Frannie's locker with Belina. The two of them always picked her up on the way to sixth period.

I had to stifle myself. This was Frannie's thing to tell. Jenn and Belina both stared at her, and when she didn't say anything, they turned to look at me. I just raised my eyebrows and kept my mouth shut.

“Don't make us ask twice, 'cause you know you're going to tell,” Belina said. She always cuts through the crap to the truth of anything. Of course, she's also the only one of us with a boyfriend, so she can afford to be a little cocky.

Frannie shook her head. “I'll tell you on the way to class.”

“What did you get her into this time?” Jenn asked me, but they were already walking away.

“You're going to like this one,” I told them. Jenn glanced back with this very puzzled look on her face. Then again, that's her normal expression. She's much smarter than she looks (she's got that typical blond Barbie kind of thing going on), but smart isn't the same as quick.

I went in the opposite direction, toward geometry, my first period of the day without Frannie. Ethan Schumacher fell in step with me out of nowhere.

“Hey hey,” he said. “What's going on?”

“Hey, Ethan.”

“Listen, the GSA's doing a tarot card-reading booth for the carnival. Interested?”

“No thanks,” I said.

Ethan was president of Roaring Brook High School's Gay-Straight Alliance and was always trying to get me involved. He was a perfectly nice person but seemed to think that being gay meant we were supposed to have all kinds of things to talk about, which we never did.

“You should come to another meeting,” he told me for the millionth time.

“Maybe I will,” I answered for the millionth time.

I couldn't blame him for his persistence. At the one meeting I'd ever gone to, it had been about ninety percent well-meaning straight kids and Ethan. He was slowly working up the queer membership, but I just wasn't interested. It wasn't like I had a jam-packed social calendar, but somehow, Frannie and I managed to fill a large percentage of our time with each other, and the idea of using the GSA as a dating service was (a) kind of gross and unethical, and (b) not going to happen anyway, given the current membership.

A little less than an hour later, I was sitting next to Frannie again. She slid me a folded piece of paper just after Mr. Hartley turned his back to the class and started writing on the board, something about the stock market crash of '29.

I unfolded Frannie's list and started reading.

1.
We would look good together. Beautiful babies, too (no, I'm not actually thinking about that seriously, so shut up—but we
would
look good together).

2.
He does all kinds of good causes. Green Up Day, etc., etc.

3.
He's a junior, so he's not graduating this year and going away somewhere.

4.
He's a vegetarian.

I looked over at Frannie and pointed at number four with my pencil. She shoved the paper back into my hand so Melissa Carpenter, who was trying to see without looking like she was trying to see, wouldn't see. Then Frannie grabbed my notebook and scribbled something on the page. Mr. Hartley rounded the corner into the Great Depression and kept going. Frannie slid my notebook back.

It didn't completely make sense, but enough that I had to let it pass.

That item wasn't actually a “good thing about Jeffrey,” but it was a perfect opportunity for me to write back

She blacked out the question before Melissa could get a look at it and then didn't write anything in reply. I couldn't blame her for not having an answer. The fact that she didn't was kind of the point. The point being, we all need a little help sometimes, and maybe that was why Frannie and I had come into each other's lives in the first place.

Cue the flashback. The screen goes wavy and blurs out, then comes back into focus on swirling fall leaves, with an exterior shot of Roaring Brook High School.

It was a year and a half earlier. I was one of those kids no one ever wants to be, the ones who get moved across the country just days before starting high school. In my case, it was from Athens, Georgia, to Roaring Brook, Illinois, and it felt something like this:

Forget the school; I didn't know a single person in the whole state except my grandmother and father, who'd moved here with me. Not to mention that I was barely just starting to figure out who
I
was. I'd basically come out to myself that summer, so it was a less than optimal time to not have anyone to talk to, but there it was, and there I was. And then there she was.

Frannie rescued me on the second day of school. She just struck up a conversation in the cafeteria line. I think it was the first time anyone at that school said something to me that wasn't a question, as in,
Where you from? Do you have the answer to the equation? You want fries, honey?

“Don't take the fries.” She whispered it at my shoulder, like some kind of spy. I guess she was trying to be polite to the cafeteria lady, who at least called me honey.

I looked at the floor, playing it cool because she was whispering to me but also kind of excited because someone was
talking
to me. I saw a pair of vintage buffalo sandals and these two petticoats she was wearing as a skirt, and I thought, Cool.

“Do you have any little boxes of cereal instead?” I asked the cafeteria lady. When I turned away with my Frosted Flakes in hand, Frannie was standing there waiting for me. I liked her style right away—she wasn't anyone's clone, but she wasn't trying too hard, either. This girl had taste. It wasn't like anyone else's taste, but it worked. And she had this very friendly face, too—the kind that can stare at you without making you mad or uncomfortable.

“I don't really like fries, anyway,” I said to her. “But thanks for the heads-up.”

“Frannie Falconer.” She said it just like that, which could have been weird but wasn't. I responded in kind.

“Marcus Beauregard.”

“Beauregard?” Unlike most people, she got her mistake right away. “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

Usually, everyone repeats my name like I picked it out myself or something. There's no good answer you can give to the question,
“Beauregard?”
I didn't have to say anything; she just got it. It was the first conversation we ever had without actually having it. The first of many yet to come.

Maybe it was fate. Or maybe our mothers got radiated by the same alien experiment when they were pregnant with us. Or it was a long-lost-twins-switched-at-birth kind of thing. Whatever it was, we snicked together like two refrigerator magnets that day, and no one's looked back since.

Flash forward and Frannie's dropping me off at home a year and a half later.

“Tomorrow, you're going to talk to him,” I told her as I got out of the car. I still hadn't managed to get anywhere with her on the Jeffrey thing.

“Whatever. I'll pick you up after dinner.” We were going to study for a quiz later at her house, which was way more comfortable than mine and always had better snacks.

“I'm serious!” I yelled. She pretended not to hear and drove away.

Inside my own house, I could hear my grandmother singing in the shower, something about yellow roses. I snarfed some peanuts from the freezer, where my father kept them, and went back to my room. A few minutes later, she knock-knock-knocked. Always three.

“Marcus? You home?”

“Come on in, Patricia.”

I've never called her grandma in my life. Patricia Beauregard, my father's mother, is what some people might call “young at heart” and what other people might call “crazy.” Anyone who's ever seen or read
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
will have some idea of the kind of person she is: a blender full of proper Southern debutante, modern older woman, and ex-hippie.

She leaned into my room far enough to show the towel-turban on her head and one bra-strapped shoulder. “Hey, sugar, how you doing?”

“Fine,” I said, trying not to look. I love the woman, but I love her more when she's dressed.

“I'm leaving soon. You and your dad can order a pizza. I already made a salad and some iced tea. That gonna be okay for you?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Patricia eyeballed me, squinting without her glasses. “You got plans tonight?”

“Just studying at Frannie's.”

She made this mouth-clicking sound of hers. “You two are so cute together. You ought to have her over here more often. She's welcome anytime.”

“I know. Thanks.”

Tidy doesn't exactly run in our family, and the furniture's about as old as I am. Patricia paid for half of everything, so I didn't want to tell her how uncomfortable our house was if you weren't used to living in it. I let it slide, along with everything else—like the fact that she thought Frannie was my girlfriend.

In the year and a half since we'd moved here, and more specifically, since I'd started thinking of myself as gay, I had shared that piece of information with my father, with Frannie, and with anyone else at school who cared to know. The one person I hadn't come out to was Patricia.

Coming out to Dad had been amazingly stress-free. He was fine about it; bland is probably a better word. I really don't think it bothered him that much, although he can be hard to read. Either way, telling him wasn't a big deal. For some reason, though, Patricia felt like another matter. I just couldn't bring myself to change her idea of who I was. She'd caught me lying once about some candy I'd stolen from the grocery store and I always remembered how disappointed she seemed in me and how terrible that disappointment made me feel. This was a completely different kind of lie, but the risk felt that much bigger. Now, even though I'd never said so, Frannie was my girlfriend where Patricia was concerned, and I was trapped in this stupid game of charades I couldn't stop playing.

Dad and I talked about it later, after he came home.

“If you want me to tell her for you,” he said, “I will, but—”

“No,” I said. “Never mind. Thanks.”

The only thing that ever changed in this conversation was the amount of time it took me to come back to the same conclusion: I wanted to tell Patricia myself. Someday. Maybe on her deathbed, if I could put it off that long.