Totally Joe (10 page)

It got even worse after history. We went to our lockers. Mine had
I
♥
COLIN
on it, and Colin's, which is across the hall from mine, had
I
♥
JOE
on it. Kelsey said we should report it to Mr. Kiley right away, but I said no, because I didn't know if Colin had even seen it and I didn't want to make things worse for him. Luckily, we were able to get the writing off both lockers pretty easily with some paper towels and soap. (Whoever did it must have used really cheap markers.) (As if I don't know who did it.) While we were waiting for Colin to show up so we could walk to lunch together, I made Bobby and Kelsey promise they wouldn't tell him what had happened.

But Colin never showed up, so we walked to the cafeteria by ourselves. Guess where he was! Not at our table, where he'd been sitting for weeks. No, he and Drew were at their old table, sitting with their other friends. I couldn't believe this was happening. It was even worse
than the Halloween party. It was like he'd turned me invisible—and all because of a stupid rumor that wasn't true! I started to go over to his table, but Bobby pulled me back.

“Don't, Joe,” he said. “Just leave him alone.”

I knew he was right. Whatever I would have said or done would only have made it worse.

It was then that I noticed how everybody was whispering and looking back and forth between me and Colin. Well, maybe not everybody, but it totally felt that way.

When we got to our table, Addie was blabbing away about what an outrage this kissing thing was, and how we needed to do something about it, and what we needed to do was start a GSA.

“A what?” I said.

“A GSA—a gay-straight alliance,” Addie explained. “It's like a club where gay kids and straight kids meet and talk about things. And one of the things they talk about is how to make school a safe place for everyone. For heaven's sake, Joe, if you and Colin want to kiss, you have every right to. It shouldn't have to turn up as tabloid trash the next day in school!”

(Addie talks like this, what can I say?)

“We did not kiss,” I told her.

She shrugged. “Whatever.” What
was
it with my friends?

DuShawn grinned at me and waggled his eyebrows. “Don't knock it till you try it,” he said. “It's sweeeeet.”

“DuShawn!” Addie said, jabbing him and turning as red as the streak in my hair. I couldn't help noticing she was smiling, though.

All of a sudden I got this picture in my head of Addie and DuShawn kissing, but because I didn't want to totally lose my appetite (or my lunch), I pushed it away as fast as I could.

I honestly don't remember much about the rest of the day. I was kind of in a state of shock or something. Even without thinking about Addie and DuShawn kissing, I could hardly eat my lunch. It wasn't the rumors that were getting to me as much as the fact that Colin was sitting at his old table and never even once turned around and looked my way. Addie was going on and on about this whole GSA thing, as if being gay and twelve (or thirteen) (Colin is thirteen) and accused of kissing your boyfriend in public were suddenly her personal problems.

I tried talking to Colin between classes later, but he just mumbled something about how he couldn't talk right then and walked away. He wouldn't even
look
at me!

The next day we didn't have school because of
something called Staff Development Day. Ms. Wyman told us in math that it was a day for teachers to learn. I don't know what they were learning, but I wondered what they would do if they learned about Colin and me and all the stuff that was being said about us. And that got me wondering if any of the teachers were gay and if they'd had things like the kissing rumor happen to them when they were in school.

It's good we had Tuesday off. I got to have an entire day to feel sorry for myself and try to figure out whether I should hate Colin or not. I mean, I couldn't exactly hate him (he's Colin, hello), but I couldn't exactly like him either. I didn't feel like talking to any of my friends, and Jeff was in his room clicking away on his computer. (Probably writing total porn to that girlfriend of his.) (Not that I would have talked to him about what was going on, anyway.) (Can you
picture
it? “Oh, sure, Joe, the same thing happened to me when I was in seventh grade and got caught holding hands with
my
boyfriend.”) (Yeah, that's gonna happen.)

I knew the only person I could really talk to was Aunt Pam. And that's just what I was going to do. The minute she got home from work, I was going to say we should
make a big bowl of popcorn and go up to her room and hang out and talk. I was even going to come out to her—I mean, I know that she knows, but I've never said the actual g-word, and anyway, I thought it would kind of make it official and get the ball rolling, family-wise. “Aunt Pam,” I was going to say to her, “I'm gay, and I'm having boyfriend trouble.” And she'd be able to tell me what to do because she's super-smart and—remember?—she wants me to be so fine I'll shine.

But then when she did come home, I didn't have a chance to say anything, because before I could even open my mouth, she was telling me that she's moving back to New York
right after Thanksgiving
, which is only a few weeks away! She sounded all excited and happy. It seems her friend found them an apartment in this really cool part of the city and she's getting to start her new job sooner than planned and blah blah blah. She said she'd miss me, and she was sorry it was so soon. I think she promised to come back for Christmas. I don't know. After it hit me that she was really leaving, I kind of stopped listening.

As days go, Tuesday totally sucked, and I was sure Wednesday would be even worse. I was right, but not for the reasons I thought. It turned out nobody was talking about Colin and me anymore. The kissing rumor was so
over. Why? Because this girl had let this boy touch her under her shirt on the stairs
right outside the main office
, and now she was a slut and he was a stud, and that's all anybody was talking about. It was like being inside some weird reality show on TV. Except in this case getting voted off the island was like winning. That's what it felt like to have nobody talking about Colin and me kissing—like we'd been voted off the island and we'd won!

I
almost
felt like a winner, until I went to my locker at lunch and found Colin's note. After that, I was back on the island and the biggest loser in the whole world.

LIFE LESSON
: Middle school is like being trapped in a reality show where there's no way off the island and you're always a loser.

THANKSGIVING WAS THREE DAYS AGO
. The relatives have gone away and we're still eating the turkey loaf we made out of the leftover turkey. Usually, I love leftovers. When my dad and I make chili (which I sometimes make on my own) (it's
really
good) (maybe I'll be a world-famous chef when I grow up)… anyway, when we make chili, I always heat up what's left over and have it for breakfast the next day. I even like it on school mornings, which probably sounds gross when you think about it being 7:00
A.M
. and eating nuked chili, but it is so not.

Next to chili, turkey is my favorite leftover. But not this year. This year, I hate everything about Thanksgiving—and leftovers. Because this year, it's not just food leftovers I have to deal with, it's people leftovers.

(Oh, and I should probably mention that we have all this leftover tofurky, too, because Addie and her
parents were here. Trust me that the tofurky is going to be left over for a loooooooong time.)

Anyway, you're probably wondering what I mean by “people leftovers.” What I mean is, the stuff people leave behind them after they're gone. Aunt Pam moved out two days ago, and I keep finding her things all over the house. It's like she packed so quickly she didn't even notice how much she
wasn't
packing. Or maybe she just didn't care. Was she in
that
much of a hurry to get away from us? Like right now, I've got this hair-clip thing sitting on my desk. I found it in her room—her
leftover
room. I feel kind of bad about it because I gave it to her for her birthday a couple of years ago, and I know she liked wearing it. So why did she leave it out in plain sight on her dresser? Why didn't it matter enough to take?

She left tons of other stuff, too, mostly in her studio over the garage. She said she's coming back for everything at Christmas. But what about the empty feeling she left behind? I don't think she'll be able to come back for that. That's going to be around even longer than the tofurky.

The reason I know this is because it's been more than three weeks since Colin left the note in my locker, and the empty feeling I got after that hasn't gotten any better in all this time. I guess I may as well tell you what he wrote:

Joe
,

The guys on the team gave me a really hard time at practice last night. They Kept asking me if the rumor was true, and some of them—even Justin, who's my
friend
—were saying things like, You'd better not turn fag on us, Briggs. Then they started making jokes about not wanting to shower with me, except I'm not sure they were all joking. I told them Kevin and Jimmy had made the whole thing up. I don't know if they believed me
.

Joe, I feel really, really bad saying this, and I hope you won't hate me, but I think maybe we shouldn't hang out together anymore. I just can't deal with what's happening. Please don't be mad at me
.

colin

P.S. I still wish I Could be like you. I can't, and that's the problem
.

I've tried really hard to hate Colin, but it just doesn't work. I miss him too much, and I guess I understand
why he had to do it. I've never been on a team, but I know what it's like for me in Phys Ed. When I first got his note, I was afraid he'd start making fun of me the way the other guys do. But that was stupid. Colin isn't like that. I e-mailed him that night and told him it was okay, that we could just ignore each other in school. But he wrote back and said, “No way.” And he doesn't ignore me. He always says hi when he sees me in the hall, and we even talk sometimes. We just don't do Moonet and Pigasso in art class anymore. We don't laugh or bump elbows.

The hardest is lunchtime, sitting at the table with Kelsey and Bobby, and Addie and DuShawn, with them acting like couples, and hearing Colin's voice from across the cafeteria. That's the time I really do get mad. But then we'll be leaving and I'll see Colin on the way out and he'll give me this little shy smile, like he's saying, “I'm sorry.” Of course, it might not mean that. It might not mean anything. Maybe it never even meant anything that he told me he liked me.

Addie got really furious about it when I first told her. She said she was going to talk to him, but I begged her not to, and for once she listened. Then she said, “This is all the more reason we need a GSA in this school!”

Whatever. We haven't even gotten this no-name-calling thing off the ground yet, and here goes Addie with another cause. She has more causes than her parents' car has bumper stickers. I guess it's cool to care so much and all that, but sometimes Addie wears me out. And, well, I'm not sure if having a club with the word “gay” in it would help or just make things worse.

Usually, I love Thanksgiving weekend because it's the first long break from school. And I was really looking forward to it this year because I thought it would give Colin and me a lot of time to hang out together. Yeah, well, that didn't happen.

Addie and her family left for the weekend the day after Thanksgiving, and Kelsey's been away the whole time. But Bobby and Skeezie have been around. They came over to my house this afternoon (Sunday). We were hanging out in my room eating turkey loaf and leftover sweet potato pie. Skeezie
est un cochon, vraiment!
Really, he should wear a bib. I wouldn't have been watching him, except I had to keep an eye on where the sweet potato pie was going to land. I mean, bright orange on my lime green shag carpet would not have been pretty.