Maps (8 page)

“Can we talk?” There was a line between Lane’s eyebrows, and he kept nervously rubbing his arm.

“Why? Everything is great.” Maps stood up, walked over the living room, and flopped down on the couch next to his best friend.

Maps could see Benji frowning at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Want to watch Ace Ventura?” Benji asked Maps. He threw his right arm over Maps’ shoulders for a sideways hug.

“No.” Maps’ stomach hurt and his heart felt like it was covered in a layer of tar.

Benji stood up, walked over to the TV stand, took out the DVD case for Ace Ventura, and popped it in the player. “Yeah, you do.”

Maps couldn’t help it—he smiled. “Yeah, I do.”

It was his favorite movie—one of the first he and Benji ever watched together as kids. Collectively, they must’ve seen it over a hundred times, but it never got any less funny to either of them. They knew almost every line in the movie, and all the famous quotes, even with the correct inflections.

“Come on Stacie, we should go,” Lane said, standing next to the sofa.

“I don’t want to go! I want to watch the movie!”

Lane signed. “Another night. Say goodbye to Maps and Benji.”

“Bye Maps. Bye Benji.” Stacie hopped off the sofa at the same time Maps did. He walked them both to the front door, trying his best not to visualize shaving all of Lacey’s pretty blond hair off her scalp.

When Lane and Stacie were just outside the front door, Lane turned and asked, “You’re still going to come to my baseball game, right?”

“Sure,” Maps replied.

I’ll be there right after I let your little sister style my hair, prance around our high school in my mother’s heels, and have tea and cake with the Easter Bunny.

Lane looked relieved. “Okay, great. Have a good night, then.”

“See you.” Maps slammed the door.

He went back to the living room and sat next to Benji.

“Well, that was dramatic. I suppose you’re just falling into your drama queen role of being my big, gay best friend,” Benji said with a huge grin on his face.

“First of all, I’m not being a drama queen. Second, I’m not big. Third, I’m not gay.” Maps went back to folding his arms over his chest.

“Oh, not gay?” Benji’s eyebrows lifted so far off his head, Maps was sure they’d be knocking the stucco off the ceiling any minute. “Then what exactly do you call that situation?”

“Situation?” He was purposefully playing dumb.

“The Lane situation. It’s obvious you
like-like
him. And you do know,” Benji leaned in close to Maps, pretended to look around the room, and whispered in his ear, “he’s a boy. That makes you gay. Maybe even super gay. Probably super gay.”

“There aren’t levels of gayness, my friend.”

“Tell that to Alfred Kinsey.”

They both went back to watching the movie. After they’d both calmed down from laughing at the scene where Ace has asparagus in his teeth, Maps finally got the courage to say what had been on his mind.

“Well, turns out I’m gay.”

“Told you,” Benji answered without looking away from the TV. “I’m surprised, to be honest.”

“Why? Surely in our long friendship I haven’t given you the impression of being an overtly heterosexual man.”

“No, I’m surprised you’re not asexual, or that you yourself can’t just stand out in the sun and photosynthesize. I’ve never seen you look at anyone before—boy or girl.”

Maps shrugged. “I haven’t. I’ve been too busy hanging out with the likes of you and working on my experiments. Then Lane came along with those damn teeth, and stupid Irish Spring soap, and now I’m gay.”

“Oh,
now
you’re gay? Like it just happened to you?”

“I guess so. I don’t really know how these things work. I mean, do I have to start wearing ascots and stuff? That’s what gay men do, right?”

“Duh.” Benji reached over and grabbed some popcorn from the bowl on the table.

They went silent again, watching the movie together in comfortable companionship.

“So,” Benji said after the part where Ace puts on a tutu. “What are you going to do about it, then? I mean, you like him and he has a girlfriend.”

Maps sighed and slumped even further down into the sofa. “Just my luck, Watson. I must be the first guy on the entire planet to ever
like-like
a straight boy.”

Benji nodded while chomping on the popcorn. “Most definitely.”

Maps didn’t go to Lane’s baseball game. Or the one after that. Maps was, in fact, avoiding Lane. For the next three and a half weeks, Maps made up excuse after excuse to get out of tutoring Lane, to avoid seeing Lane in school or around their houses, and always kept the curtains in his room closed.

He wasn’t mad at Lane—he had no right to be. He didn’t know how to act around someone like Lane. Someone he
liked
.

So Maps tried to distract himself from thinking of Lane’s gapped teeth, his pear-green eyes, and his awkward laugh. Maps focused all his free time on his experiments and schoolwork or hanging out with Benji, when Benji really insisted.

And it worked.

Lane had stopped coming over, stopped smiling at Maps those rare times they ran into each other in the hallways at school, and stopped sitting behind Maps in math class.

Which was exactly what Maps wanted. Wasn’t it? Maps had to admit that it wasn’t getting any easier putting the distance between himself and Lane, but it was the way things had to be, no matter how much it upset Maps’ stomach.

Lane had a girlfriend, and was straight, and hadn’t done anything to warrant Maps’ stupid boyhood crush. And what was worse was that Maps had made it so blatantly obvious to Lane about how he felt.

Maps felt like such an idiot.

Still, he went home every day after school and stared at that map on the wall, feeling more lost than ever.

One particularly dreary morning before school as Maps was slowly getting ready in his room, his dad knocked on the open door and came in.

“You all right, son?” his dad asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Dad,” Maps replied as he hunted under the cotton duvet for his misplaced cellphone.

“You haven’t been tutoring your friend Lane lately, huh?”

“I’ve been busy.”

His dad chuckled. “Busy driving your mother crazy. She found her curling-iron plugged in out back with the nozzle in the dirt yesterday. The day before that she found two frogs in our bathtub and a ‘Please Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door.”

“She needn’t worry,” Maps said. “I set Darwin and Gretel back out into the wild yesterday. They were kind of rude guests anyway.”

“That’s not the point, Mattie.” His dad sat down on the edge of Maps’ bed, then pat the empty space next to him, where Maps immediately sat. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with your friend Lane.”

“Me too,” Maps said quietly. That ache in his stomach was back.

“And I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but believe me when I say that there will be others, okay? You’re the best person on the planet. Who wouldn’t love you?” Maps’ dad wrapped his arm around Maps’ shoulder and smiled at him. It was that kind of honest, loving smile that only a parent could give. The kind of smile that you knew, deep down in your soul, was unconditional.

“Thanks, Dad,” Maps said, managing a weak smile back.

After that, Maps’ morning wasn’t so bad. He met Benji at school and Benji invited him over later to play a new videogame that his parents just bought. Maps also managed to get an A+ on his English exam and his Bio teacher allowed everyone in class to pick their own lab partners.

The day definitely was off to a good start.

Until lunch.

Maps was waiting in line for the Tuesday special: a day old piece of breaded chicken on a dried burger bun with a side of about ten fries, all of which were soggier than a banana a week past its prime. Naturally, Maps had his head in a science book—Chemistry, to be exact—reading up on the fascinating principle of ionic bonding when someone walked right into him.

He tripped and fell over, his science textbook flying off into the distance, hitting and knocking someone’s tray out of his or her hands.

“What the hell!” someone yelled, and that same someone stomped over to where Maps was sitting on the floor, feeling around for his glasses, and continued yelling. “Watch what you’re doing!”

“Sorry,” Maps replied awkwardly, finding his glasses and sliding them up the bridge of his nose. But then he caught sight of whose tray he’d upset.

Benji’s older brother, Assface.

“God, you’re such a freak, Maps! Don’t you ever pay attention to what you’re doing?”

Maps stood up and dusted himself off. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I said I was sorry; it was an accident. I’ll even pay for your lunch. What’s your favorite again? The blood of a virgin?”

Assface reached out and shoved Maps hard and again, Maps found himself on the ground. This time he hit the wall first on his way down and his shoulder seemed to have lost the match between itself and the concrete wall.

“Ow.” Maps stared up at the ceiling. His head was spinning a little from hitting the floor. Assface never could take a joke. Maps should’ve remembered that. Maybe he also should’ve taken into account he had a solid fifty pounds on Maps.

Maps, knowing when he’d been bested, pulled himself up off the ground. His head still felt foggy, but he could tell there were people yelling around him. One of the voices sounded like Benji. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard Lane yelling his name. But the last thing Maps wanted was Lane to see him looking even weaker and more pathetic than usual.

Somehow he managed to slink through the crowd of students who’d gathered—

clutching his shoulder the entire time—and then slipped out of the cafeteria.

He’d been put out of commission by just one shove from Benji’s brother. He knew better than to push his luck.

Maps walked out the front doors of the school and leaned his good shoulder against the exterior brick wall. A few students were around chatting with each other, their school bags slung over their shoulders and their boots slopping through the last of the melting snow. Maps breathed deeply, enjoying the feeling of being outside, away from all the people who were surely laughing at him by now.

He pulled his cellphone out the pocket of his favorite green cardigan, dialed, put it to his ear, and said, “Dad, will you come get me?”

* * * *

“So, how bad was it after I left?” Maps asked Benji over the phone. His dad had picked him up after school and Maps spent the rest of the afternoon and evening lying in bed feeling sorry for himself. He was tucked under the covers with his favorite robot pajama bottoms on and a pack of ice on his shoulder that his mother insisted he keep there.

“Oh, man, you should’ve seen it!” Benji sounded giddy, almost like it was Christmas morning. Maps had to admit that he felt a little offended that his best friend was having such a fun time reminiscing about Maps getting flattened with one little shove.

“I did. I was there,” Maps said.

“No, Maps, I mean
after
. I came over to yell at my brother, and you know, serve him his own ass for breakfast, but I was beaten to the punch! My brother—“

“Assface.”

“Right. My brother Assface was yelling all sorts of profanities. Real mean stuff about you that wasn’t true, stuff that would definitely get him in trouble at home for saying.”

“Uh huh.”

“And then out of nowhere, Lane was there. He
leapt
over one of the lunchroom tables, Maps. He leapt! Like a freakin’ Clydesdale jumping over an obstacle. Then he was all in my brother’s face, saying that he’d better stop talking crap about you, or else Lane would deck him.”

“No!” Maps actually put the palm of his hand flat over his heart like some sort of Southern Belle.

“Yes! And then he did, Maps! My brother said something else, something a gentleman such as myself dare not repeat, and Lane decked him! In the face!”

“In the face?”

“Right in the face!”

“Is Lane okay?”

“Oh, yeah. They were both taken to the principal’s office for fighting, and my brother got suspended for three days, so Lane probably is too. Oh, but Maps, was it ever worth it. I thought Lane was kind of a doofus before, but now his status is much closer to godly.”

Lane had punched someone for Maps.

Right in the face.

While Maps didn’t necessarily believe in or condone violence of any kind, his heart couldn’t help but pitter-patter at the thought that someone—especially Lane being that someone—had defended his honor.

“You know,” Benji said quietly, “since that really awkward night at your house with Lane and his awesome little sister, I haven’t seen Lacey hanging around with his group of friends.”

Maps swallowed, his throat tight.

He had to stop thinking of Lane like
that
. Maps was a boy, and a weird one at that. He was awkward and thin, his glasses weren’t stylish and cool, even Lane’s evil little sister thought his hair was stupid, and his eyes were bland and muted. And he definitely did not have a too-charming-for-his-own-good gap between his two front teeth.

Maps didn’t feel all that much like talking anymore. “Sorry Benji, I have to go.”

“Yeah, no problem. Hope you feel better by tomorrow. See you at school on Monday?”

“You bet.”

Maps hung up the phone and flopped back on his pillow. He stared up at the ceiling wishing he was staring at the map on his wall. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, paused, swung them back onto the bed, then crossed his arms over his chest.

He would not succumb to his stupid emotions and go look at some piece of paper on the wall. He was smarter than that, and much, much tougher.

Twenty-four seconds ticked by. Maps knew; he counted.

Sighing, he swung his legs over the side of his bed again, then paused, and swung them back onto the bed.

“Damn you, self!” he yelled.

Maps finally hopped off the bed, raced over to the wall, almost tripped on his school bag, and stood in front of that map. It looked so innocent—just a piece of paper. Yet it caused his heart and mind so much grief. He briefly contemplated tearing it off the wall and chucking it into the garbage bin, but he knew that wouldn’t help. It wasn’t the map that had ensnared him, it was Lane.