Starting From Here Read online

  Van translated. “Yes, that’s right! Colby’s here for Thanksgiving, too!”

  I lowered myself to the carpet with a groan. “Long day?” Van asked.

  “Is there any other kind?” I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “If you told me an asteroid was about to hit Earth and kill everybody, including me, I think I would finally have something to be thankful for.”

  “Wow, dramatic much?” Van said. “Look, if this is about Rachel—”

  “What would possibly give you that idea?”

  “—you have got to stop. Are you going to let her haunt you forever? Because that is just not healthy.”

  “It hasn’t been forever. It’s been a week. And I can’t help it, Van. She dumped me for no reason.”

  “I thought she said she was stressed out.”

  “That wasn’t the real reason. How could that be the real reason? There must be something else, something she didn’t want to tell me.”

  “Does it matter?” Van asked. “It’s over now.”

  “But if there was something I could change … if she’d give me another chance—” A sob caught in my throat. Teddy’s head swiveled, a puzzled look on his chubby face.

  “Aw, Colby,” Van said, scooting over and putting an arm around me. “Forget her. She’s not worth it.”

  I sniffled. “You know that’s not true.”

  Rachel was special. From the moment I’d met her at an Alliance meeting my sophomore year, something about her had gotten to me. She was so cute, without having any idea. Kind and smart, too. Van had agreed, and we started inviting her along when we went to the movies or the mall or the park.

  It didn’t hurt that she was something of a mystery. Van and I had played the “Is she or isn’t she?” game for months. Her short hair and tomboy fashion sense screamed queer, but to the best of our knowledge, she’d never gone out with anyone. I’d lie awake at night aching to find out.

  The first time Rachel and I kissed had been a summer afternoon. The three of us were supposed to meet at Milham Park to kick around my old soccer ball. I hadn’t played a real game since Mom died and I quit the Lady Wolves, but I still had my gear, and I liked to get outside and run after the ball, to send it sailing over the grass. It made me feel powerful.

  That day Van had bailed at the last minute, and I decided to act. Before I left home I brushed my teeth for a good five minutes. Then, on my way to the park, I got so nervous I snarfed half a bag of stale sour cream–and–onion potato chips from Scarlett’s glove box. I’d stopped at a drug store and picked up some candy to get rid of the taste. When I finally kissed Rachel, my mouth tasted like raspberries and cream. Before long, hers had, too.

  Van sighed. “I like Rachel. I do. But she hurt you, and that means she’s on my shit list.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, right, your shit list. So next time you see her you’ll give her the stink eye and then give her a hug?”

  “All right, you’ve got me there.” Van pressed his lips to my forehead. “But you’ll always be my special-est friend. You know that.”

  “Until you get a boyfriend.”

  “Even then, may it happen in this lifetime.” Van put his hand over his heart. “Semper fidelis.”

  I wiped my eyes. “The marines so don’t want you. You realize that, right?”

  “Of course they do. They just don’t know it yet. Give me five years, and I’ll be changing diapers in Afghanistan and building skate parks in Burundi.”

  “I think you’re confusing the Marine Corps with the Peace Corps.”

  “But I’ve already got the haircut!” Van ran his hand over his buzz. “And I’d love to wear one of those funny little hats. Ooo, ooo! Do you think the turkey’s done? I can show you my prowess with a blade!”

  I laughed and shook my head. I didn’t know how I’d survive without Van.

  I returned to school Monday determined to show Rachel that heartbreak wouldn’t get the best of me. I still loved her, and my heart hurt like hell, but I’d respect her decision. I’d be her friend, her completely platonic friend. And maybe once her life settled down she’d realize how much she missed me, and things would go back to the way they were—except this time we’d officially be a couple.

  Between first and second periods, I caught a glimpse of her in the hallway. I opened my mouth to call her name. But I stopped—at first because I wasn’t sure it was Rachel after all, and then because I was.

  Rachel Greenstein was walking the halls of Westnedge High holding hands with a boy.

  HIS NAME WAS Michael Schmidt. I had to wait an agonizing two hours until lunch period to learn this, and then it was all my friends would talk about. Michael was a senior like Rachel. He was on the honor roll like Rachel. He was Jewish like Rachel. He was even tall like Rachel.

  “They must’ve had some weekend,” Zak said. We looked across the cafeteria to where they sat with a bunch of Michael’s friends. Even last week when it had killed me to sit so close to her, Rachel had kept having lunch with us. “They’re all over each other. I wonder what was in that gravy, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “Dude, shut up,” said Van, tipping his head in my direction. Rachel and I might never have been official, but everyone in the Alliance knew there’d been something between us.

  “Oh. Sorry,” Zak said. “This shit really blows.” He paused. “So, does this mean Rachel’s bi? Or is she straight, and Colby was just a—what do you call it—anomaly?”

  “Dude!”

  I watched Michael grasp Rachel’s shoulder as they laughed about something. I longed to march over there, rip his paws off her, and kick him in the part of his anatomy that wasn’t like Rachel.

  “I, for one, am disgusted,” Liliana said. “Look at her, totally flaunting it.” Liliana sidled in close and slipped her arm around my waist. “You know, Colby, you shouldn’t let her bring you down. You’ve got to show her you’re still in the game.”

  Zak smirked. “You think making out with you is going to improve Colby’s mood? Think again, girlfriend.”

  “Why not? It’s worked before.” Liliana pressed her cheek against my shoulder. “Besides, I didn’t say it had to be me! But it could be. Just to show Rachel.”

  Liliana’s perfume smelled like apple pie with too much sugar. I shoved my uneaten sandwich across the table and stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

  Grabbing my backpack, I rushed down the deserted back hall, past the automotive and wood shops, and out into the clammy, gray cold.

  Van caught up less than a minute later, panting. “Sorry about those idiots.”

  “It’s not your fault.” I hugged myself, shivering. I didn’t smoke, but right then I wanted a cigarette. It might have helped to warm me up and given an excuse for the ache in my chest. When I came to school that morning, I’d thought the worst was over. Wrong.

  “Zak’s a bonehead. And Liliana—”

  “Will flirt with anyone with boobs? I know, Van. It’s not them.”

  “I know. Hey, you’re cold.” He yanked his hoodie over his head and pushed it into my arms.

  I clutched it to my stomach. “She lied to me. She said it wasn’t me, that it would be the same with anyone, but now she’s with him.”

  “Put on the sweatshirt, Col. There’s no sense in both of us freezing.”

  I pulled it over my head. It held the faint scent of lemon laundry detergent mixed with the pizza and peanut butter of the cafeteria and a hint of boy sweat. I immediately felt warmer but couldn’t stop shaking. “You know what the worst thing is?” I asked through chattering teeth.

  Van stepped close and rubbed my arms. Goose bumps stood out on his pale forearms. “What?”

  “It’s the way they were touching and didn’t even care who saw them. The way they were holding hands. We were together almost five months. She never let me touch her when anyone else was around, except you.”

  “Oh, Col. You know how some people are.”

&nbs
p; “But everyone knows Rachel’s in the Alliance. What did she have to lose?”

  I remembered meeting Rachel’s parents. I’d stood in their living room, surrounded by paintings bigger than I was—paintings you could tell were the real deal. I’d tried not to stare down at my dingy socks.

  Rachel and I had been hooking up for a couple of months by then, and I was already in way over my head. I’d thought maybe, just maybe—but when Rachel introduced me, it was “Mom, Dad, this is my friend Colby from school.” Friend.

  As they smiled and shook my hand, I’d felt myself fade. It took being alone with Rachel, feeling her lips against mine again, hearing her breath, to bring me back.

  Maybe Rachel had already known things wouldn’t last long between us. Maybe she’d already decided she didn’t want me, and it was only a matter of time before she found someone better to replace me. Maybe that was why I’d never told Rachel how I felt. I’d known what she would say—or wouldn’t.

  Van grasped my hand. “Come back inside. Lunch is almost over.”

  I let him drag me in, but I had no idea how I could get through another three hours of school knowing that somewhere in the building Rachel was daydreaming about Michael Schmidt.

  “You could talk to Mr. P.,” Van said. Mr. Peabody was the only “out” teacher at Westnedge High and the Alliance’s faculty adviser. “I’m sure he’d have some advice.”

  “That would be weird. He sees Rachel all the time.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  We plodded out of the tech wing, skirting the hall monitors and ducking upstairs to our lockers. “Hey,” Van said, “what do you call a cow that won’t give milk?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “A Milk Dud!”

  No response.

  “Come on, Col, you’ve got to admit it’s funny.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Not even a little bit?”

  I forced a smile, but it was more like a grimace. I didn’t want to talk to Mr. Peabody. I didn’t want to hear Van’s corny jokes. There was only one person I wanted right now—to bury my face in her neck and cry until I couldn’t cry anymore, to have her tell me everything was going to be okay—and she’d been dead for a year and a half.

  FROM THE RAINBOW Alliance Internet Lounge:

  stonebutterfly: Did anyone go to the Snowflake Semiformal?

  z-dawg: Are you for serious? N to the O. Not after the Spring Fling.

  stonebutterfly: What happened?

  van_the_man: Zak and I were dancing. It wasn’t a slow song. We weren’t even touching. But afterward I mysteriously got slammed against a wall. I swear I have brick-shaped scars.

  z-dawg: They didn’t touch me but on Monday I found “fag” written all over my locker. Again.

  kittykat96: Well I for one had an amazing time at Snowflake. I danced with EVERYONE, boy or girl, and no one said a thing.

  yinyang: Don’t forget me!

  kittykat96: That’s right, I also danced with my favorite two-spirited friend. :-)

  writergrrl: Maybe no one said anything to you but that doesn’t mean they weren’t talking.

  kittykat96: How do you know? I didn’t see you there.

  writergrrl: I was serving punch. Trust me, you can learn a lot serving punch.

  van_the_man: Oooooo, give us some dirt!

  writergrrl: No way! I’m a journalist, not Perez Hilton.

  van_the_man: Well, P to the O-O on you. I’ll just take my enquiring mind elsewhere.

  The day before winter break I left chemistry class with the certainty that I’d failed yet another test. The night before I’d stayed up past midnight, trying to make sense of acids and bases until my eyes were as red as the numbers on the clock. But when the bell rang, my exam was still half blank.

  “Happy holidays!” Mrs. Hoekstra said as she collected my test.

  I just walked out.

  In the hall I darted around gaggles of girls squealing and hugging as if they were leaving on a mission to Mars instead of going home to cookies and eggnog. I sidestepped jocks twice my size and slipped into the stairwell, only to get an eyeful of tongue wrestling—all boy-girl, of course. I wanted to escape, the faster and farther away the better, but my coat and keys were still in my locker.

  I was twenty feet from my locker when a Frisbee whizzed toward my head. A tall, balding figure stepped out of a doorway and grabbed it before it clocked me.

  “Colby Bingham!” Mr. Peabody beamed down at me. “Where have you been hiding?”

  “Oh, I, uh—”

  I hadn’t been to an Alliance meeting since Rachel and Michael started going out. In a school of two thousand, it wasn’t that hard to avoid her. All I had to do was reroute my paths between classes, sit with my back to her new lunch table, limit contact with our mutual friends, and stop attending my favorite club. See? Easy. I still dropped in on the Alliance’s “Internet Lounge,” but only because I didn’t have to look Rachel in the eye there.

  “The Alliance is heading over to Fazoli’s,” Mr. Peabody said. “What better way to say farewell to fall than with a bottomless basket of breadsticks?”

  My mouth watered at the thought, but I said, “Sorry, Mr. P., I really need to get home.”

  I pushed onward—then regretted it. Rachel was leaning beside my locker.

  “Colby. You’re avoiding me.”

  I opened my locker and dropped my chemistry book inside. Bang. “What gave you that idea?”

  “I thought we were going to try to stay friends.”

  “And I thought you were too stressed out to see anyone. At least, that’s what someone told me. Guess they were wrong. Or flat-out lying.”

  She ignored the jab. “A bunch of us are going to Fazoli’s. Want to come?”

  “It depends.” I pulled on my coat and patted the pockets for my keys. “Is he coming?”

  “He doesn’t have to,” Rachel said. “I told him it might be too soon.”

  “So you’re saying it’s up to me?”

  “Well, yeah. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  “How sweet. So if I say no, there’s no question who the big, fat jerk is.”

  “Come on, Colby. I don’t want to fight.”

  “Of course not. Why fight when it’s so easy to get your way? ‘Oh, it’s not the right time for me to be with anyone.’ Anyone except Michael Schmidt!” I couldn’t stop now. “Did I disgust you from the beginning? Did you think you were doing me a favor? The whole time, did you secretly wish you were with a guy?”

  “Colby, stop it! I wasn’t ready, okay? I got scared.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’d never be ready for me?” I folded my arms and stared her down. The hallways weren’t exactly empty yet, and I wasn’t exactly being discreet. But I didn’t care. Anyone who didn’t already know I was gay was welcome to find out now. I was used to name-calling and dirty looks from the homophobes of Westnedge High. It would take a lot more than that to shut me up.

  After a long moment Rachel sighed. “I’m not going to lie. Some things are easier with Michael.”

  “No kidding. Because now you can give your mom that nice, Jewish wedding and have lots of babies and forget all about your ‘experiment’ with me—”

  “Colby—”

  “I should have known from the start I was wasting my time. You can’t change a straight girl.”

  “I’m not straight. I—I don’t know what I am. But I didn’t fake a thing with you.”

  I remembered the way Rachel’s fingers had tangled in my hair when she kissed me, and I believed her. I swallowed the rest of my angry words. The lump in my throat was as hard as a peach pit.

  “About Fazoli’s,” Rachel said. “I’ll tell Michael it’s not the right time.”

  “No, it’s okay. I already told Mr. P. that I wasn’t going.”

  “Well, maybe you and I could hang out over break. See a movie or go ice-skati
ng.”

  I should have told her no. Why torture myself? But instead I said, “Maybe.”

  Maybe if I gave Rachel time, she’d realize how much she’d given up.

  “All right. I’ll call you. We’ll figure something out,” she said.

  Rachel opened her arms to hug me, but I pretended to see something else I needed from my locker and turned away. She got the hint and stepped back, back to the arms of her new boyfriend and a bottomless basket of breadsticks.

  I found Van down the hall, strapping his skateboard to the bottom of the purple, paisley tote bag he’d made in home ec. He broke into his chip-toothed grin when he saw me. “Are you working this afternoon? Did you hear about Fazoli’s?”

  I groaned and banged my forehead against the nearest locker.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Van stood and pulled a puffy, green vest over his hoodie. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  “Not with You-Know-Who there.”

  Van giggled. “You make him sound like Voldemort.”

  “He might as well be.”

  “You can sit at opposite ends of the—”

  “No, Van. I’m just—It’s too—I can’t. Not yet.”

  Van shifted from foot to foot. “Well, I’d ride home with you, but I already told Mr. P.—”

  “It’s fine. Really. Just give me a call when you get home, okay?”

  “Sure.” He loped off toward Mr. Peabody’s room. I headed for the door.

  The sky was gloomy with clouds and freezing drizzle. Scarlett was a beacon in the gray parking lot. I fired her up, turned on the wipers, and joined the line of cars waiting to get out of the lot. The engine almost drowned out the growling of my stomach.

  The Alliance kids frolicked down the sidewalk toward Fazoli’s. Van walked beside Mr. Peabody, his paisley tote and skateboard swinging at his side. Near the head of the pack, Michael Schmidt carried a huge, orange Westnedge High golf umbrella. Rachel held his arm. It was very sweet. So sweet it made my stomach hurt.

  I PARKED IN the mud beside our trailer. It was a yellowed, vintage single-wide with only four rooms (if you counted the bathroom). There was a bedroom on either end, and in the middle was the living room with its kitchen alcove. It wasn’t much, but it was plenty big enough for Dad and me, especially considering how little Dad was home.