Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (9 page)

Someone wrote that war is hell. I’m sure it is and although I have no firsthand experience in the trenches or in tanks, I’m pretty sure high-school combat is second on the list of hellish places. At least it is for me.

I’m in front of my locker, which the janitors have stopped repainting because the last graffiti was in industrial-grade electric blue, and HOMO refuses to be covered over. From my bag I remove blue electrical tape and try to transform the last
O
into an
E
so it reads HOME.

“If this is home, get me the hell out,” Spence Harrington says as he shuffles by in his flip-flops and shades. This merits a high five from one of his buddies.

I’m not used to the attention because I was always the girl off to the side. In class pictures, I never was front and
center holding the black sign stating MRS. COBURN’S 2ND GRADE CLASS. And in track, I had the best times but I never bathed in the sports glory. I always thought this was because it didn’t suit me—that I didn’t need the attention like other girls, ones whose whole sense of self-worth was based on how many candids they got in the yearbook, how many people voted for them for Prom queen.

But now, with my back against the cold metal of the locker and my eyes searching for a friendly face anywhere, for anything that doesn’t seem menacing or blaming, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be seen. That skulking on the sidelines and not taking credit for baking teacher thank-yous, not minding being cut from the paper in an article about local runners, even shrugging off Danny’s thanks for the advice I gave him about applying early to MIT—it wasn’t because I’m just so selfless and sure of myself. And it wasn’t because I’m shy.

I’m a fly-under-the-radar person because all along I was afraid of being found out.

And now my secret is out.

Lucas stares at me from across the corridor, the class warning bell cutting the chatter. We lock eyes like long-lost lovers in a movie. People who are meant to be together.

Only we’re not.

At Jenny’s house, during one of her infamous parties (the theme was “God Is Great, So Are Games!”), we played hide-and-seek. We were fifteen or so then and all the games felt laced with tension: Would Marc try to slip his
hand over Nina’s during tug-of-war? Was Twister just an excuse to topple your body onto someone else’s (answer: yes)? Hide-and-seek was sort of epic due to Jenny’s land—sloping fields of corn and soy that scratched their own music in the wind, rocks that led to a dried-up creek, a barn in a state of disrepair and disuse complete with bales of hay and an old cart that I used to hide in. It was nice to get away there, listening to the country sounds and the laughter as everyone ran to find a place to duck, some waiting until the last minute.

I don’t remember who the seeker was—maybe Jenny, maybe one of her minions. I just remember it took forever to be found. In the end, I wasn’t. I had to crawl out of the cart and find everyone else, and of course I had bits of straw poking out from my hair. Meanwhile, everyone else seemed to be having a grand old time toasting s’mores. “Where were you?” Lucas had asked with marshmallow on his lower lip. Everyone at the party waited for my answer. “Waiting to be found, where else?” Turns out it wasn’t hide-and-seek we were playing but sardines—everyone was searching for one hider. Each person who found the hider also got into the hiding place until they were all bundled in together, huddling and giggling and probably flirting and breathing into one another’s ears, waiting. Only I’d been alone. “You totally missed out!” Jenny had said then, and when I see her now, next to Lucas, I know she’s glad I’m fumbling with tape by myself.

“You coming to practice?” Melissa George’s question
interrupts my memory as she pulls her math text out of her locker. She’s not oozing excitement, but since she’s one of the few people who’ll talk to me I shrug and face her.

“I guess.”

She zips her backpack closed with so much force I feel sorry for the fabric. “Don’t bother,” she spits.

A ripple of anxiety and anger comes over me. “Oh, God! Not you, too?”

Melissa turns on her heel, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. “Were you aware that I’ve had a thing for Spence Harrington since forever?” She doesn’t give me time to say no, actually, I wasn’t into tracking the crush-lives of my teammates. “No, probably not. And why is that, Tessa? Because you’re self-centered.”

At this point, Jenny pushes off from the lockers across the corridor, ignoring the late bell, and comes just close enough to Melissa that it’s clear she’s supporting her. Melissa sucks her breath in. “And just when it’s all set, when Spence gets it”—she hits her head with her palm—“and he’s going to ask me, maybe not in such a grand way with a neon sign or anything, but still. I had my dress and everything, Tessa. And now I can’t go to Prom.”

Lucas had a dog growing up, Mo-hee-to, because he couldn’t say “mosquito,” and right now Lucas has the same look on his face as he did that cold morning when Mo ran into the parking lot at Giant Brooks and ended up under a truck’s back tire.

I don’t know what to say to Melissa. I really don’t.
Because I want her to go to Prom with Spence. I pause, knowing I’ll be late for Spanish and will have to deal with more attention there—even bilingual taunts because Señora Aliaga doesn’t care what we say as long as it’s
en Español
. So I say, “Listen, Melissa. I want you to have an amazing time with Spence. It’s great he asked you.”

She stares at me like I’ve suggested it’ll all be okay if she gets a pet kitty or something. “You are so totally out of it! Don’t you get it? You’re the whole reason I can’t go to the friggin’ dance in the first place. My parents have banned me from any activity you’re a part of … and Prom? It’s bad enough that you want to make the fashion mistake of a tux—that’s just dumb. But airing your own private love-life issues is ruining the whole school.”

I’m about to say sorry, cry, and run away, but I see Lucas still standing there, staring at me, at this, and doing nothing and I can’t bear it any longer. My whole life is the sardines game again, and I don’t want to hide and wait to be found. “Just so we’re clear: if I go to Prom with a girl, a boy, or an antelope, it’s no one else’s business. If I wear a designer knock-off like Jenny or spend every last cent I’ve earned bagging groceries for an online extravaganza, it’s no one’s concern but mine. I’m not ruining the school. This isn’t my fault.”

I think I’ve made a difference. Covered up some of the verbal graffiti. But Melissa turns to look at Jenny and wrinkles her mouth at me. “Actually, the school student handbook says nothing about bringing livestock as your date, but it does forbid your lesbo plans.”

Señora Aliaga pokes her head out from the classroom and yells at us in Spanish to get to our seats. Melissa and Jenny move. I just stand there. Did they really just suggest I take a cow or goat to my Senior Prom? I want to laugh, barf, and scream all at the same time. Lucas would come up with a word for that, the combination of all three. And we’d incorporate it into our daily lives like we did with IFA—Identified Flying Assholes. So I swivel, thinking I’ll give it one last shot, and cross the impossibly wide corridor toward him.

Only when I do, he’s gone.

I’m left there, alone in the echoing hallway, the getting-near-the-end-of-the-year debris strewn around me, my locker door with its paint and tape looking like a crime scene. And so not like home.

I rip the stupid tape off and resolve to try to be normal, only what’s normal anymore? As I go to class with my head spinning, I hear the
click
,
click
of office assistant Mrs. Hayley’s shoes on the floor. I turn, and sure enough, there she is, folding papers and sliding them into lockers where they wag like white tongues. I reach for the notice and try not to flinch when she doesn’t make eye contact. Did she used to? Yeah, she was sort of friendly, wasn’t she? I can’t really remember now and I’m second-guessing everything.

I begin to shove the paper into my back pocket but then decide to recycle it, knowing Lucas would make me if he were here. Not that he is. Only when I unfold it by the green bin, I see that it’s not an order form for extra yearbooks or a plea to come to the cheerleaders’ carwash
“fun”-raiser this weekend. It’s an official notice from Principal Hartford detailing the “upcoming school board meeting to determine whether this year’s Senior Prom and the events surrounding it will occur.”

My breath stops. My mouth hangs open. Seriously? No Prom? No glitter ball, no fake waterfall at the Embassy Suites? No photos of students with carefully shellacked hair, and hands around the waist from the back? No updos or pedicures or virginity-losing in cars or hotel rooms? I scan the text dreading what I’ll find, but the only reason given for the meeting is “necessary committee ruling” and “an issue affecting the entire community.” But I know what they mean. When they say “issue,” what they mean is Tessa Masterson.

Everything I saw on the computer when I looked up “my best friend is gay” said more or less the same thing: your friend is the same person he’s always been, it’s just that you now know more about him. Also, don’t worry that he’s going to try to hit on you.

Of course my problem was more that the fact that Tessa’s gay, or a lesbian or whatever, means she’s never going to hit on me. It means the love I have for her in spite of everything is never going to be returned, at least not like that.

So, yeah, in addition to everything else, that kind of hurts.

But not as much as it probably hurts being Tessa right now. Of course I chickened out and didn’t try to go talk to her at the store. Instead, once I got back to school, I just
stood there in the hall and stared while awful people were awful to the girl I have considered my best friend for years. I kept seeing myself in my mind walking over there and putting a stop to the whole thing, but I was just so ashamed. I felt like I caused it. And Tessa was looking at me like I was one of them.

I guess maybe I am, but I never meant to be. Damn it. I should have gone over to her.

It’s too bad Coach Hupfer doesn’t have a speech for this occasion. Something like, “If you ever see douche bags picking on your friend and you don’t stand up for her, you might as well hit the showers because you’re not tough enough to deserve a friend.”

We have a game after school, the first one back for both me and Danny, and the other team is nice enough to leave a complimentary copy of the DVD
Hot Girl-on-Girl Action, Volume 4: Slippery When Wet!
in the locker room for us. And the fans chant “hohhhh-mohhhhhs” in the cadence Red Sox fans invented in 1986 when taunting Darryl Strawberry with “Daaaaa-rryyyyyllll.”

Of course the Red Sox fans were rewarded with one of the greatest chokes in sports history, and we take similar revenge on Brownsville County Regional Voc-Tec High with five shutout innings courtesy of yours truly and a sixth-inning grand slam from Mr. Danny Masterson.

The best part, though, is how the taunting from the other team and their fans pulls us all together, how the whole team stands as one.

Just kidding, of course. The team actually turns on Danny for being Tessa’s brother and on me for, I guess, being her friend for years. Well, that and not actively joining in with the witch-hunters at school. Funny—I tried to stay out of it at first, but my failure to take either side just made everybody mad. Our teammates do not rally around us in the locker room to congratulate us. Nobody slaps me on the butt and tells me I had a good game. I guess they’re afraid that might be too gay.

It’s weird. Nobody’s saying anything nasty to either me or Danny. They’re just not letting us play in their reindeer games. Until we get on the bus, and I sit next to Danny in the very last seat, and somebody calls back, “Hey look! I guess they really do like it in the rear!”

Danny just drops his head. If I know his parents at all, they told him he wasn’t supposed to get into fights over this stuff, that getting suspended just made it worse, and typical stuff that parents who’ve never been trapped in the back of a bus full of people ready to tear you apart say.

“Hey, these fags just carried your sorry asses through this game!” I yell. “Ten strikeouts, fifteen outs over here, and four runs from Danny. So maybe if you tried being a little less ignorant, your game would improve. How’d you do without us, anyway?” I know the answer: they got their clocks cleaned two games in a row.

Up in the front of the bus, Peter Davis yells, “I don’t care. I’d rather lose than have to play with you fags.”

I really want to yell at him. Or else hit him. But what’s the point? The fact that I don’t hate a lesbian has made me gay in their minds. There’s no logic in what they’re saying, so I can’t argue them out of it. And I could take Peter in a heartbeat, but then what? He’s still going to be filled with hate, and I’d get suspended again.

I’d like to report that I just quietly ignored them, but instead I said, “Funny your mom didn’t think I was such a fag last night. Though she did ask me if I would give it to her in the—”

“Luke! That’s it! Enough!” Coach Hupfer barks from the front of the bus. Yeah. Big man. He’ll keep order on this bus as long as I’m standing up for myself.

The bus rolls past the MegaMart on the Brookfield-Mason line. The MegaMart corporation has bought a big billboard right across Route 126 from their store. It says: MEGAMART. STANDING UP FOR INDIANA’S FAMILIES. SHARING INDIANA’S VALUES.

Great. The Mastersons have held off MegaMart for years and I guess I always thought MegaMart was too big to notice them, but now that they see the Mastersons are down, they’re making sure to kick them.

I hate MegaMart. I hate this bus. I hate this town. I hate this sport. I hate everything. Most of all, myself.

As we roll past Giant Brooks, I’m happy to at least see some new people with new signs in the parking lot. NO HATE IN BROOKFIELD, one says. GOD IS LOVE, says another. They’re still far outnumbered by the people with the
antigay, anti-Tessa signs, some of whom are screaming, red-faced, at the “God Is Love” people.

Mom’s waiting when I get home. She’s actually cooked dinner. “Hey! How’d you do?” she says.

“Five shutout innings. Ten strikeouts. And everybody on the team hates me for, um, I guess being Tessa’s friend or something, which I’m actually not anymore.”

“Ugh. I’m sorry, kid. I’m afraid this is just gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“Great. Mom, can I ask you something?”

“Sure. Ask me anything.”

“Why did you come back here? I was thinking on the bus that the only reason I even want to keep playing baseball is that it’s my ticket out of this dump. So, I mean, why’d you come back here, anyway?”

“Hang on,” Mom says. She gets up from the table, goes to the fridge, and grabs a Miller High Life, cracks it, takes a long drink, and returns to the table. “Didn’t realize it was going to be one of those conversations.”

I pick up a forkful of taco casserole and chew. “Yeah,” I say. “I guess it is.”

“Okay. Well, honestly, I had no idea what the hell else to do. My whole world was completely upside down, and I had to start a new life as a mother at nineteen years old, and I couldn’t … Everything else was new, you know? Being a mom and everything. I couldn’t face trying to
start a new life in a completely new place. So I came here.”

“But they were jerks to you when you got back.”

“Some people were, for sure, including your grandmother, which is why we don’t ever visit her in her retirement condo in Florida.”

“I thought that was because we’re broke.”

“Well, yeah, that too. But also because, like a lot of other people, she couldn’t wait to tell me what a horrible person I was and that I had shamed her and couldn’t come looking to her for a handout. So, yeah, a lot of people were awful. But not everybody was. And, I mean, it was … I knew that even most of the people who hated me would look out for my little boy if they had to. I mean, I figured if you were born here, you’d be Brookfield-born, and Brookfield would look out for you in case … in case I couldn’t.”

I stare at her.

“Oh, Jesus, Luke, not like that. I wasn’t going to leave you on the stoop of the fire station or anything like that. I was scared. You know? I was a year older than you are now. And I really didn’t know if I was going to be up to the job. And if I was just another person in Cincinnati or Chicago or Indianapolis, nobody would care about you. But if I was here, I knew people who knew me when I was five years old wouldn’t want my kid to suffer just because his mom was a screwup.”

Mom takes another long pull on the beer, and since we’re having one of those conversations, I decide I might as well go for it.

“So who was he, Mom? And why don’t I know who he is?”

“Jesus, kid, you’re really coming at me tonight. I thought you liked the taco casserole.”

“I do,” I say between bites. “I just need to … I need to understand.”

“Well, I would go get another beer, but then the irony might be too strong. Honestly? I mean, I’m gonna give you this one last chance to not know some stuff about me that you’re never going to be able to un-know. You know?”

“No.”

“I mean, I’m gonna tell you some stuff about me that I’m not particularly proud of. And it’s not the kind of stuff most kids like to know about their moms.”

I take another bite of taco casserole. “Lay it on me, Mom.”

Mom sighs. “Okay. I got to college after being … pretty sheltered. I mean, of course people in Brookfield were getting high and having sex nineteen years ago, but I wasn’t one of them. First Lutheran youth group, academic clubs, homework, the library … Well, you know this type of kid now, probably.

“So college was a shock to me. Just the—it was too much freedom. For me. And I had kind of deprived myself of most of the fun of adolescence, so I was going to have as much fun as possible there. So I developed a kind of—I drank a lot. And other stuff. It’s not hard for a cute naive girl to get her hands on any kind of intoxicants she wants. Or guys, for that matter. I’m not going to get into any more detail.

“But, okay, to answer your question, I guess, kind of, I … at the time, I figured it was my mistake alone, and I didn’t want to blame anyone else. I wasn’t careful or responsible. And, to be honest, it could have been at least … Well, let’s just say there was more than one possible candidate.”

I have stopped chewing my taco casserole. This is because my mouth is hanging open.

“And I just …” Now Mom is starting to cry and I feel horrible for even bringing this up. “I never thought about how it might affect you. I really … That probably sounds incredibly stupid to you, but I mean, I was a pregnant nineteen-year-old, so I wasn’t that smart to begin with, and I really thought only about me. You were like, just an idea at the time, and I didn’t want to … I’m sorry, kiddo, I really am. I screwed up, and I had my head so far up my own—I didn’t even realize that the mistake that was gonna haunt me forever was not even trying to find out who your dad was.”

It’s awkward, but I scoot my chair up next to Mom and put my arms around her. “So. Only thinking about yourself with no idea how your actions were going to affect anybody else. I think I know a guy like that.”

Mom laughs and wipes tears away. “What can I say. You come by it honestly.”

At school my access to the Internet is heavily filtered. But because I live in a small town my access to information, at
least about Brookfield, Indiana, is still lightning fast. So, before I even get through the school door the next morning, I know that there’s a big school committee meeting coming up so the community can discuss “the issue.”

I called “the issue” my best friend for most of my life, and I want to go to her right now and tell her I’m sorry, and to be strong, and, oh yeah, guess what Mom told me about my dad?

I’m ashamed of myself, of how much I’ve failed Tessa, but I’m not going to add to the list of stuff I should be ashamed of every day. So I march up to Tessa’s locker, where she is pulling books out and stuffing them in her bag as Melissa George and Stephanie Campbell have this conversation just a bit too loud right next to her.