Been Here All Along (10 page)

We're both quiet for a moment before Kyle takes an audibly deep breath, like he's trying to suck up all the air in the room.

“Are we fighting?” he asks.

“We're not fighting.”

“Then what would you call it?” he asks.

“I don't know. We just hung out yesterday.”

“But there's something weird between us, right?”

“Jeez, Kyle, I don't know,” I say. I hate that he's noticed, too. I didn't want him to notice. I didn't want him to think about how weird I've been recently and then start connecting the dots to the fact that I'm attracted to him.

“You hate Ruby,” Kyle says. He states it like it's a fact, like he's trying to catch me off guard.

“I do not hate Ruby,” I say, rolling my eyes. Even though I kind of do hate Ruby these days. “Hate is a very strong word.”

“Then you hate me,” he says, his chin going up like it used to when we were kids and would start fighting. Like he can't control his emotions and his eyes might start tearing up any second.

“Have you considered that maybe this has nothing to do with you?”

“Then what's it about?”

“Maybe I just hate myself.”

Kyle's mouth hangs open.

“I don't mean, like I'm—” I start, and stop, sitting up in bed and rubbing my eyes. I really didn't mean to say that. “I don't mean I'm, like, suicidal or something. But I'm trying to figure things out, and maybe I feel like being alone sometimes.”

Kyle is still sitting there with his jaw hanging down, not saying anything but looking like I just told him that I started a puppy fight club.

“Or maybe I just
felt
like being alone the past few days. Maybe I'm feeling better.”

“Maybe?” he asks.

“I don't know. Life sucks sometimes. There's no explanation. Not really.”

“But everything is okay with your family? Are your parents getting divorced?”

“Everything's fine. And no, they're not getting divorced.”

“So you just had a lot of feelings and didn't want to talk to me? I mean, I know something's been bothering you lately, but then we hung out yesterday and it seemed like it was better. Like you were better. But then you went back to not talking to me today. I just feel sort of, I don't know, what's the word?”

“Disconnected?” I offer.

“Yeah, disconnected.”

“Do you really want to hear about my feelings?” I ask.

He bites his lip and looks out the window, but then he turns back and smiles at me, even though his face is sad and tense. “You can tell me anything.”

I suck in a deep breath; he was honest with me about feeling disconnected, so I should be honest with him. “Like I said yesterday, I've been trying to figure some stuff out. And I don't really…” I pause, rethinking how I want to present this. “I'm not ready to talk about it yet. But you're my best friend. I promise when I'm ready, you'll be the first to know.”
The third to know, technically
, I add silently to myself, since Ruby knows and I accidentally already came out to Ezra.

Kyle nods, and I can see that he's putting on his brave face.

I can't help feeling like there's something he's not saying, too. Maybe I'm just projecting. I study him for another moment before his phone buzzes in his pocket.

He checks it.

“Damn it.”

“What's up?”

“It's my mom. I gotta go. But you know you can talk to me anytime, right?” he says.

“Yes.”

His phone buzzes again. “Shit.”

“What is it?” I ask.

He opens his mouth and shakes his head.

“You know you can talk to me anytime too, right?” I say.

He pinches the bridge between his eyes. “I know.”

“So maybe soon we'll both just…” I trail off, rolling my eyes at the thought. But then I continue. “We'll both decide to trust each other again.”

“Maybe,” he says quietly, before backing out of the room.

Kyle

I take a few deep breaths before walking inside my house. The text from my mom said I needed to come home right now because there was a problem.

I go through a list of things that could be wrong. Things like one of my grandparents getting sick, my sisters getting hurt, or maybe my parents are getting a divorce. Maybe I jinxed the divorce thing by asking Gideon about his parents.

I go around in circles with worst-case scenarios for the sixty seconds it takes to get from Gideon's house to my back door.

My parents are sitting in the kitchen waiting for me when I walk in, and I realize how stupid I am. This is about school. How could it be about anything besides school?

It makes me wonder if you can actually lose IQ points. Maybe that time I walked into a stop sign in seventh grade a few of them fell out of my head.

“Kyle,” my dad says as I walk in.

“I swear I'll try harder!” I blurt out, interrupting, my anxiety about everything getting the better of me.

“Oh, sweetheart,” my mom says. “Have a seat.”

I sit.

“I got a call from your English teacher today,” my mom says.

I nod, gulping a little for air that seems to have left the kitchen. “I just want to say that I've worked really hard lately in English and I don't know what the problem is, and I think it's probably that Ms. Gupta is out to get me.”

“Kyle,” she says, her voice containing a note of unexpected warmth and sympathy even as I try to paint my perfectly nice English teacher as a villain. “Ms. Gupta thinks you might have an undiagnosed learning disability.”

“She does?” My stomach drops. “I thought I wasn't applying myself or something. I didn't think—I didn't think
that
.”

“She called to discuss options with me. We're going to have a meeting next week with Ms. Gupta, your guidance counselor, and a reading specialist. After that you'll have to take some tests to figure out what's going on. Those tests should be able to provide a clear picture of what kind of problems you might be having.”

I'm not as shocked as I would have expected. I think somewhere deep down inside, I've always known that I might be a little bit broken. I just never expected anyone else to notice.

Unfortunately, that thought doesn't help the bubbling anxiety in my stomach as I think about taking these tests.

“But I'm doing okay,” I say. “I'm fine.”

“Oh, champ,” my dad says, calling me
champ
for the first time since I was about eight years old. “Of course you're fine. But maybe if we figure out what kind of obstacles you have, you can find new ways to get past them, rather than banging your head against them over and over.”

“Did you ever suspect that something was wrong with me? How has this never come up before?” I feel a little panicked at the thought of what my new reality might look like.

“First of all, nothing is wrong with you,” my mom says. “But for the record, I never suspected you had any kind of learning disability, and no one's ever said anything. You always needed a little extra push, but I figured it was because you were a firstborn. You didn't have any brothers or sisters to model yourself after. But nothing's wrong, Kyle. You're not wrong.”

“Okay,” I say after taking a few more deep breaths.

“It's nothing to worry about,” my dad says.

“We're gonna figure this out,” my mom promises, patting my hand.

“But you're definitely going to have to come directly home after school and work on your homework. I don't want to see your grades slip any further,” my dad adds, before I can feel too good about the conversation. “You still have basketball camp this summer, and I don't want you to jeopardize it.”

“So I'm being punished for possibly having a learning disability?” I ask, hearing the whine in my voice and hating it.

“You know that's not what we're doing,” my mom says.

They dismiss me after that, probably to talk about me further without me around. But I have to admit that I do feel a little lighter now that things are out in the open. Maybe everything is about to get a little bit easier.

 

twelve

Gideon

Playing with fire in chem class on a Friday afternoon should never be this boring. I'm not entirely sure why Mrs. Arnold even bothered bringing out the Bunsen burners. There was one thing that needed to be heated up. She could have done it herself and consolidated the flames.

And fine, maybe I'm a little bit scared of fire, but only because my classmates are all obviously morons. I don't know why I decided to take AP Chemistry at the same time as AP Physics. I could have cut way down on my chances of being burned alive. But I just can't help myself. I'm an overachiever.

I spend most of the period sitting alone at the lab table, because my partner is absent. I focus all my energy on thinking about Kyle. It's really helping to distract me from worrying about the school catching on fire.

I still can't stop thinking about my birthday, which feels like a million years ago even though it was just last weekend. And then I go back to Ruby. And Kyle's face when he was in my room yesterday. And then I finish the circle by going back to thinking about my birthday.

What if Kyle likes me, too? He was making almost as much intense eye contact as I was. And it's not like he's homophobic. I don't think that makes sense, to be bisexual and homophobic, but I guess anything is possible.

Furthermore, he's the one who said at the beginning of the marathon that Elijah Wood was cute and then later told me that I remind him of Elijah Wood. If that's not a pickup line, then I have no idea what a pickup line is.

On the other hand, why would he use a pickup line on me?

I have completely lost control over my life. The only thing I can control anymore is the low flame on my Bunsen burner.

I know I need to do something. I need to stop acting like Ruby has some big control over my life, when I know that she doesn't. If I come out to Kyle and tell him I like him, then Ruby has no power over me.

Why does she want power over my life anyway? It's not like I have so much going on. She should concentrate on her own life.

I close my eyes for the briefest of seconds and tell myself that I just need a sign. That something will happen that will set all this in motion. And if I don't get a sign before June, I will definitely tell him over the summer. Or when he gets home from basketball camp. Or definitely before school starts next fall.

Maybe when Ruby leaves for college would be a good time.

Yes. Barring an act of God, I will wait until Ruby is safely installed at college before telling Kyle that I am gay, and in very deep like with him. This news will keep until then.

I happen to open my eyes at the very moment that this girl in my class, Bonnie, passes her lab papers improperly over the flames, and they get singed. She's too dumb to realize they're not actually on fire, so she drops them directly on the burner. Had she simply just thrown them to the side, everything would be fine.

Bonnie's screaming her head off and Mrs. Arnold is running for the classroom emergency gas shutoff and I'm just sitting here stunned, considering that not three minutes ago I was thinking about this very scenario. Perhaps if I've really ruined my life, I can move into a new career as a psychic. I'm already living a fraudulent existence by not coming out of the closet; I could continue the pattern and take people's money in exchange for bogus fortunes.

Mike Maxwell puts the fire out by beating it with Bonnie's backpack, and Bonnie just continues to sit there screaming her head off.

“I saw my whole life flash before my eyes!” she wails. “It was so boring!”

Her friend rubs her back, making cooing noises and trying to get her to calm down.

The next thing I know, Mrs. Arnold is yelling that she can't get the gas off and all the burners flare up higher. I have the distinct feeling that my eyebrows are about to get singed off. I can't stop myself from blocking them with my hands. As if my hands are really going to protect anything during a major gas fire.

The whole class seems to be holding their breath. Even Bonnie finally stopped crying.

“This isn't good,” Mrs. Arnold mutters. She runs around to each individual hookup, stopping at mine and trying to turn the connector off. It doesn't seem to have any effect on the flame.

After determining that something is legitimately wrong, she turns to look at us, white-faced. I feel like she's about to apologize or something. It's a very weird moment.

Then she pulls the fire alarm. It starts blaring and we all look at one another, unmoving, as if we still can't believe this is happening.

I'm so scared I can barely move a muscle. Maybe that's what everyone else is feeling, too.

“I'm not kidding, people!” she yells. “We need to get out of here.”

Mrs. Arnold grabs her cell phone and calls someone, explaining what just happened while ushering students out of the classroom and into the hallway, where a crowd is building to make their way out of the school.

I think I have my act of God.

I was not expecting that.

Kyle

When the fire alarm goes off during my English class, I'm more than a little relieved. Now I won't get pulled aside by Ms. Gupta at the end of the day. I can look forward to a nice, long Gupta-less weekend. I really didn't want to share my feelings about the testing she set up for me on Monday. Though she'd already gotten in a few sympathetic smiles before the alarm went off.

During the plodding walk out of the building, it becomes obvious that there are some crazy rumors flying around about why the fire alarm went off. There are a lot of people saying that this isn't just a drill, but it's hard to tell who really knows something and who's just pissing in the wind.