Been Here All Along (2 page)

But you should see Gideon's older brother, Ezra. He's got the raddest freaking tattoos all over his body, and instead of going to college, he decided to move to California and become a professional surfer. I honestly can't think of anything cooler than that. Or any one human being more opposite to Gideon.

And on top of that, the Berkos were totally cool about it. And actually supportive. I feel like if I proposed that to my parents, they would basically lock me in my room for the next four years and force me to get an online degree. After the online degree, they would probably let me do whatever I wanted, but they're super into going to college. I think because they didn't go themselves.

“Mom!” I yell again. “Mom! Mom!”

“What, what, what?” she asks, coming up from the basement with my basketball jersey in hand.

“I was looking for that!” I say, grabbing it from her.

“I washed it for you. I told you I was washing it for you.”

“Oh.”

“Now eat something before you're late.”

I look over at the breakfast table, where my sisters are eating bowls of cereal and being complete opposites as usual. Julie is typing furiously on her phone while Emma looks about half-asleep.

“And you two need to get out to the bus,” she adds, staring them down.

My mom works in an office that she loves doing a job that she hates, but she doesn't have to be there until nine, so she's still wandering around the house in her pajamas, yelling at us. It's not until my sisters leave for the bus to the middle school that she goes upstairs to get ready herself and I'm left in peace and quiet for the ninety seconds it takes me to eat a Pop-Tart, brush my teeth, and grab the rest of my stuff.

“See you later, Mom!” I yell up the stairs. I get a muffled reply as I turn to walk out the door, but a second later she's at the top of the stairs.

“Hold on,” she says.

I freeze, trying to remember what I'm in trouble for.

“Gideon's gonna kill me if I'm late,” I say, glancing toward the living room again, but I can't see the digital clock on the cable box anymore.

“Are you going to be home for dinner?” she asks.

“I'm supposed to hang out with Ruby after basketball practice.”

She sighs that kind of put-upon mom sigh that I know too well. I haven't been home for dinner much lately.

“But for you, Mom, I'll make an exception.”

She rolls her eyes but smiles. “All right, get out of here before Gideon calls in the SWAT team.”

When I get outside, Gideon's leaning on my car, checking his watch like it holds the secrets of the universe.

I'm about to apologize when he starts talking.

“Do you like pep rallies?” he asks.

“I can't stand them,” I tell him honestly, shuddering a little at the very thought.

“Awesome,” he says, climbing into the passenger side.

“You have lipstick on your forehead.”

“Damn it,” Gideon says, pulling down the visor and checking himself in the mirror.

“Should be a napkin in the glove compartment,” I say.

He roots around in there while I pull out of the driveway and head in the direction of the Dunkin' Donuts drive-through.

“So, what's up?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Why were you running late?”

I shrug.

“No, really, you seem weird,” he says, side-eying me. “You're all twitchy.”

“Um, well. I think I'm going to come out to Ruby.”

“What? Seriously? Why?”

“Well, um…” I can't find my train of thought, and I have no idea why I'm so nervous.

“I mean, like, why now? What changed?”

“It kind of feels like I'm lying to her.”

“But you like girls. Like, how relevant is this? What guys do you even like?”

“Chris Evans,” I say.

He rolls his eyes. “Barring the unlikely event that you happen to run into Chris Evans, how big of a role does being bisexual really play in your everyday life?”

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Like what?” he asks.

“Like I'm on trial for wanting to come out to my girlfriend.”

His jaw drops as he realizes that's exactly how he's acting.

“Is it because you're one of those people who don't believe bisexuality exists or something?” I ask.

“Hell no.”

“Then what?”

“I don't know, it's one of those things where I know I'm acting weird but I can't get myself to stop. I'll do better. I promise.”

“Good.”

“So how do you think she'll take it?” he asks, holding on to the “oh shit” handle for dear life as I take a curve a little too fast.

“Hopefully she'll be cool about it. I don't think she'll assume it means we should have a threesome or something.”

“Who did you come out to that asked you to have a threesome?”

“No one. But think about it. It's got to happen all the time. ‘Oh, you swing both ways? Let's invite a second dude into our ménage.'”

“Exactly how much porn have you been watching lately, Kyle?” he asks, his face mock serious.

“There is nothing wrong with porn,” I say, wrenching the steering wheel in the other direction.

“I didn't say there was, just that you might be watching too much of it.”

I roll my eyes.

“Just so I'm up on all of this, who knows you're bi?”

“Pretty much my whole family except for my great-aunt Alba, but that's just because she's senile, you, your parents, your brother, Buster, Sawyer, and Maddie. Why, did you hear something?”

“Nope. But who's going to gossip about you to me?”

“An excellent point.”

“I guess what I don't understand is why you seem nervous about coming out to her when so many people already know.”

“Another excellent point.” I chew my lip. “I guess it's just different with Ruby because, I don't know, she might not like me as much after she knows. Or something.”

“If that's the case, then she's basically just an asshole.”

“I know.”

I make a sharp left into the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot and gun the engine toward the drive-through.

“You could warn a guy,” Gideon says, rubbing his throat where the seat belt cut into his neck.

“Hey, Gideon, we're going to Dunkin' Donuts,” I say.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” he says.

“I had a Lord of the Rings marathon last night,” I tell him after I place our order.

“Is that why you were actually running late?”

“Um, maybe,” I say.

“You watched without me? I thought we were saving it for spring break.”

“Well, we were, but I don't know, I couldn't sleep. I was thinking too much about coming out to Ruby. I only watched the first two and not the extended editions!”

“Oh,” he says, his voice quiet.

“Anyway, I was thinking—”

“We're not having the conversation about the eagles again. We're not going down that road. Our friendship cannot withstand that debate.”

“I'm not talking about that,” I say, trying to get him to listen.

“Good. I'm not prepared for that debate at 7:32 in the morning.”

“I'm mostly just wondering what would happen if someone swallowed the ring,” I say when I finally park the car on the side street next to the high school.

“Why would anyone swallow the ring?” he asks.

“I don't know. But hypothetically, what do you think would happen?”

Gideon shakes his head and continues walking toward the front doors.

“No, but really, Gid, come on. I thought we could have a nice conversation about this!” I call after him.

“It's not going to end well,” he says over his shoulder as I catch up.

“But just think about it.”

He rolls his eyes, but I can tell he's going to think about it. This is how it is, was, and always will be between Gideon and me.

 

two

Ruby

I don't really understand why people hate pep rallies.

I'm head cheerleader. I probably love them by default. There's a semi-decent chance that I'm biased about the whole thing. But really, what's not to like?

People are so anti-pep that the administration had to move all pep rallies to the middle of the day so that everyone would stop cutting them at the end of the day.

I mean, I guess it's always nice to get out of school early. Maybe if I didn't have to cheer during them, I'd want to leave, too.

But what I really don't understand is why Gideon Berko is currently sitting in the bleachers going over flash cards. Probably SAT vocabulary.

Instead of trying to understand him, I just clap my hands and shake my pom-poms even harder. It's the least I can do for Kyle, who's so bashful during these things it makes me want to prod him out into the spotlight. His hands are shoved deep into his pockets, and he's shaking his head just the right way so his hair falls in his eyes. But he's smiling. He can't hide the fact that he's smiling.

He's a good boyfriend. An amazing one, even. Probably the best I've ever had, because I don't think he's dating me just to be able to say that he's dating a cheerleader.

I thought for sure my senior year would be completely boring and devoid of fun. Until Kyle showed up, looking adorable and nervous as he approached me at the homecoming dance back in October. For once there was a guy who liked me who didn't say all the right things.

I'd be lying if I said I'd never noticed him before. It was hard to miss him when he was a sophomore playing starting center. He made a pretty big splash for a kid who up to that point seemed to have only one friend.

When the pep rally finally ends, I help the other girls clean up some of the posters and confetti. I spot Kyle and Gideon leaving the room together. They're like magnets. They will find each other anywhere, anytime.

After they're gone, I think about how other people look at them. People who don't know them. But it's hard, now that I've spent time with Kyle and Gideon, to look at them the same way I used to.

I used to think they were just really big nerds.

Looking back, though, I also remember seeing them laughing all the time. Like they were sharing the best jokes that the world has ever known. They didn't actually care if I was sitting across the cafeteria from them, thinking that they were nerds. It didn't keep them from passing notes in Elvish.

It still doesn't keep them from doing that, no matter how many times I've joked about being uncomfortable that they're talking shit about me in a made-up language. Kyle insists that they're not saying anything bad. But he never actually says they're not talking about me.

But as Kyle is so quick to remind me, not
everything
is about me.

I like to tell him that it should be. And I'm only joking a little bit when I say it.

Kyle

I think the new English teacher is out to get me or something. Mrs. Masterson, my old teacher, who was really, really, really old, freaking loved me. She knew I was smart and she didn't pressure me. I'd had her for English since freshman year, and she let certain things slide. Like how bad my spelling is or when I couldn't make the right connections between characters while we were reading
The Crucible
.

But we only read two or three books a year with her. It helped that she would read most of them to us in class, because I don't think she knew what else to do with the time. Also she'd read us a lot of poetry. She was really into poetry.

During winter break she fell on some ice and broke her hip. I guess that made her realize how old she was, so she decided to retire. Now I have this new teacher for English, Ms. Gupta, who's trying too hard to connect with everyone.

We started on a Shakespeare unit in January. Our first play was
King Lear
, and I just didn't get it. None of it made sense to me. Sometimes she'd give people parts to read out loud. That's when she noticed how much trouble I have with reading. I just couldn't keep up. My hands got all sweaty and the words started to blur. The worst part was how quiet everyone else got around me while I tried to push through one stupid sentence.

We're juniors in high school. We should never be forced to read aloud in class. I can read fine to myself when I can go slowly. I'm just really bad at not getting nervous and stumbling and I take a long time. Everyone gets bored listening to me.

And in elementary school I used to get made fun of because I was so bad at reading. That doesn't help. That doesn't make you a very confident reader later in life. But that shouldn't make or break my English grade ten years later.

After the
King Lear
incident, she started calling on me more, and then she started asking me to stay after class.

So for the past three months she's been trying to “work with” me because apparently in her world I'm close to failing English, even though I always got a C+ from Mrs. Masterson. But since it was the last class of the day and I had basketball practice, there hasn't really been time to talk.

Unfortunately, today all the class periods were a couple of minutes shorter to make room for the pep rally earlier, so when the bell rings, it kind of throws me off. I'm usually ready to sprint out of this classroom in fear that Ms. Gupta is going to want to talk. She catches me, of course, since I'm one of the last people walking out of the room.

“Kyle?” she calls out. She has a nice voice. I really like it, actually. It's got just this little hint of an Indian accent, and she sounds all smooth and smart.

“I don't wanna be late for practice,” I say, just barely turning around.

“I know, I know. Big game coming up. But just one second.”

I turn fully around and make sure I don't meet her eye. I'm playing cool, pretending to be a tree. That usually works pretty well for me.