Truth about Truman School (10 page)

The next morning, as soon as my mom got in the shower, I hurried into the living room and turned on our computer. My mom didn't like me getting on the computer before school, but I had to see if milkandhoney had posted my “secret” yet. My fingers were shaking so bad I could hardly type www.truthabouttruman.com.

When the site came up, I saw huge block letters at the top of the screen:

LILLY CLARKE IS A LEZBO!

What?!

There were three sentences in smaller letters below the headline.
Don't believe me? Click
here
to read Lilly's blog. Find out who she's in love with.

I gasped. I didn't have a blog! And everyone already knew who I was “in love” with—Reece!

I was scared to click on that link, scared to see what I might find there. But not clicking on it was even scarier. I had to know what was on there before I went to school. So I clicked … and I found myself on a website that was all done up in purple (which happened to be my favorite color). It had lots of pictures and animations. There was a picture of me in the upper right hand corner (my normal eighth-grade picture, not that awful fifth-grade one). The words “Lilly's Lesbian Diary” sort of danced across the top.

There was only one entry:

Hi! Welcome to my blog. My name is Lilly and I'm an eighth grader at Truman Middle School. I've decided it's time to come out of the closet and tell everyone that I am a total lesbian. And I'm proud of it. I'm going to use this blog to write about all my lesbian experiences.

I stared in horror at the computer screen. I didn't write this. I didn't write any of it. I wasn't a-a …
lesbian!
I didn't even know any lesbians, except for maybe Emily Tate. Everyone said she was one.

I kept reading:

Here's my list of the top five girls I want to go out with:

5. Morgan Kennedy

4. Kylie Holtzman

3. Cassie Wheeler

2. Brianna Brinkman

And the number one girl I want to go out with is … .(drumroll please!)

1. Hayley Wood

All popular girls!

“Lilly?” my mom called. “Where are you?”

“I-I'm right here,” I called back, hoping my voice didn't give anything away. I quickly shut everything down and tried to act normal when she came out, but it was hard. My entire body trembled. My heart pounded so hard I thought it was going to explode.

“What are you doing?” Mom asked. “Are you on the computer?”

“Yeah … I was just … checking Centerpoint … to make sure I got all my homework.”

My mom looked at me funny, like she didn't quite believe me.

I stood up. “I better get ready for school now,” I said. Even though school was the last place I wanted to go.

How in the world was I going to face everyone at school?

I checked the Truth about Truman website while I dried my hair before school. Lilly's “secret” was up:
LILLY CLARKE IS A LEZBO!
There was a link to her diary, which was all about her “lesbian experiences.” Plus a list of girls she “likes.” Hayley and I were at the top of the list.

Hayley was going to FREAK OUT when she saw this.

I turned my hair dryer off and checked my buddy list to see if Hayley was online. She wasn't, so I grabbed my cell phone and texted a quick message to her: go 2 truth about t. then call me.

I had a feeling Lilly's days in our group were numbered.

I got Brianna's text message just as I was turning on my computer. I had already been planning on checking out that site, but thanks anyway, Brianna.

I rubbed foundation makeup into my face while I waited for the page to load. There it was:
LILLY CLARKE IS A LEZBO!
Don't believe me? Click
here
to read Lilly's blog. Find out who she's in love with.

I wiped my fingers on a tissue, then clicked on the link, which led me to this purple website that was all about how Lilly likes
girls.
There was even a list of all the girls she likes on there.
Our entire group was on that list!
And
I
was number one.

There were seven comments about all this on the Truth about Truman. Most of them said things like, “They're ALL a bunch of lezzies!”

I gasped. Who said that?

Somebody who called themselves Megagulp, but who was Megagulp?

Okay, we needed to do some serious damage control. We couldn't have people thinking our group was made up of
lesbians!

This was when I started having some doubts about Lilly. Whether she was gay or not, that was her business. But beyond that, there was something else that was bothering me: People didn't respect her anymore. And if they didn't respect her, they wouldn't respect us.

I didn't have all my makeup on yet, but I picked up my phone and called Brianna anyway. We had to figure out what we were going to do about this. And we had to figure it out before school.

Just because it said on that website that Lilly Clarke was gay didn't mean she really was. Kids have been saying that about me since third grade, and believe me,
I'm
not gay!

I didn't even know what gay or queer or homo meant when I first heard those insults in third grade. I thought queer meant weird. Even back then, there was something about me that was different from the other kids. I didn't walk like them; I didn't talk like them; and I've never been into sports or bands or movie stars. So by everyone else's definition, I guess I was weird.

I looked up homo at dictionary.com and found out it was short for homosexual. Then when I read the definition, I had sort of this
aha
moment. Not about myself, though. About my Uncle Cole and Uncle Mike. Uncle Cole is my mom's brother. Uncle Mike is the guy he lives with. In a one-bedroom apartment.

Were Uncle Cole and Uncle Mike
homosexuals
? I asked my mom back in third grade. She wanted to know where I heard that word. I didn't want to tell her kids at school had called
me
that, so I told her I read it in a book.

She said yes, Uncle Cole and Uncle Mike were homosexuals, but
gay
was a better word. Then she asked if I understood what that meant. I don't know if I really understood yet back then, but I said I did because I didn't want to talk about it anymore. Uncle Cole and Uncle Mike were two of my favorite people in the whole world. (They still are!) I didn't want to think about them being weird or different.

As I got older, I realized they really weren't all that different from anyone else. Not in any way that actually mattered. And Uncle Cole is one of the few connections I have to Mom, so I'd have to be really stupid to think it mattered that he was gay.

But when you're in middle school, it matters a lot if you're gay. It matters a lot if people just
think
you're gay. It's like one of the worst things you can say about someone in middle school.

Whoa. If there's one thing that makes people more nervous than Muslims, it's people who are gay. At least in middle school. I don't think there's ever been a popular gay person in the history of middle school.

Lilly was going to have a hard time getting past this. At our school, if people even
think
you're gay, you may as well be gay.

At first I thought I was on the website Amr made for his mom's garden club last year because the background and layout were exactly the same. But then I actually read the words: Lilly's Lesbian Diary.

Lilly was a lesbian? Really? And even if she was,
that
was the big secret?

I'll admit, part of me wondered if it was true. I mean, how could someone as boy crazy as Lilly turn out to be gay? But what did I know? Maybe she just acted all boy crazy to cover up the fact she was gay. Or maybe she wasn't gay at all. Maybe milkandhoney, whoever he, she, or they were, made it all up? I was pretty sure
somebody
had made up that whole diary thing. Who calls a diary “My LESBIAN diary?” Would a real lesbian do that? I don't think so.

But even if Lilly was a lesbian, so what? This was the twenty-first century. Most people don't care if a person is gay or not. Well … most of the people
I
hang out with don't care.

As it turned out, some people did care. A lot. And of course Hayley just made things worse by telling anyone who would listen that of course
she
wasn't gay. You should have seen her. She was practically holding court on the steps of the school.

“I am
not
gay!” she said. “I had no idea that Lilly was. This whole thing is just really embarrassing for me.”

Leave it to Hayley to turn herself into the victim. Please! There were so many more important things to worry about at our school than whether or not Lilly Clarke was gay.

You're probably wondering if I ever thought about just taking the link to Lilly's Lesbian Diary down. After all, one of the two rules we had for the site said that what you posted had to be true. And honestly, I didn't know if this was true. I didn't know whether Lilly was gay.

But I didn't know that it
wasn't
true, either. Obviously somebody thought it was. That's why they posted that link. And really, it was just a link. One little link wasn't so bad.

We also said that anyone could post whatever they wanted on our site and we wouldn't censor it. So … in the interest of free speech, I decided I had to leave that link up.