The Alliance (3 page)

“Jamie Ballard was my best friend. I don't want what happened to him to happen to anyone else.”

Ren snorted. “Little queer killed himself. You can't stop that kind of thing.”

Seriously, you needed the patience of a saint to have a conversation with Ren. “Mr. Ballard told me Jamie was being bullied. Somebody harassed him until he couldn't take it anymore. Threatened his life, even. You're wrong. That kind of thing
can
be stopped. And it
should
be stopped.”

Ren got quiet. He looked around to see if anybody else on the team was listening, then leaned in.

“Dude, don't you have enough to do already? You're already in, like, six clubs already. You've got football now, baseball in the spring. You're on track to be valedictorian. You go starting a new club, you won't have time to study. You'll blow it all … why? Just because some perverts are getting picked on? Not worth it, dude.”

Ren punched me on the shoulder before grabbing his backpack and leaving. I don't know why I bothered trying to talk to him about it. At least it showed me that I had a lot of work ahead of me. And there was one bright spot: trying to explain it to the rest of the school could never be as hard as trying to explain it to Jon Renquist.

– – – – –

Cory met me outside the locker room. She threw me a toothy smile and handed me a mango smoothie, like she did every day after practice.

“You're the best,” I said. I downed half the cup immediately.

Cory linked her arm with mine, and we walked down the halls. “Are you feeling better?”

“Not really. I can't stop thinking about Jamie.”

“Would you like to come with me to church on Sunday? You could talk to Father Erikson. I always talk to him when I'm sad or confused.”

I didn't want to offend her, but religion was never really my thing. “Thanks, but that's okay. I was doing some research online last night, and I think I know one thing that might make me feel better. Do you think the office is still open?”

“I doubt it. School got out an hour ago. Why?”

“I need to get the paperwork to start a new club.”

Cory's eyes lit up. “Oh, that sounds fun. What kind of club?”

I explained to her about the GSA I wanted to start in Jamie's memory. She smiled and nodded.

“That'll be a lot of work,” she said. “Are you sure you'll have time for it? What about your grades?”

Ugh. Something was wrong with the world when my girlfriend was asking the same questions as Ren.

“I'll
make
time for it. This is really important to me. I feel like I should have been there for Jamie. I feel like I let him down.”

Cory drew me close and kissed me hard. She pulled back slowly so that only our foreheads were touching. She looked me right in the eye.

“I bet you anything that if you could ask him, Jamie would say you never let him down. I'm sorry that, for whatever reason, he didn't think he could tell you about everything that was going on. But it wasn't your fault. You were such a good friend to him.”

I really wanted to believe that. Some nights, I stared at the ceiling and got mad at Jamie. It seemed so selfish for him to kill himself and not even give me the chance to help him. But then I turned it around and got mad at whoever made him feel like his life wasn't worth anything. Like suicide was the only way out. I didn't know what I'd do if I ever found out who did that to him.

“Let's go,” I said. “I can stop by the office in the morning. First thing tomorrow, we lay the groundwork for Southside's new GSA.”

Cory's lips pulled back. It looked like she was smiling, but I couldn't really tell. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought she was biting her tongue.

“Sure,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

I

couldn't help it. I laughed out loud. Mr. Olson gave me his dirtiest look ever. And he'd given me plenty since school started. From the minute I walked into his class, his looks told me exactly what he thought of me. When Ma looked at my clothes, she just hated that they weren't her style. When Olson looked at me, his eyes said,
Troublemaker.

Olson turned back to the whiteboard to continue explaining the themes in
The Scarlet Letter
. I looked down at the note Ricky passed that made me laugh in the first place.

NO JOKE. SCOTT KING IZ STARTING A GSA.

Scott King? The football player? He was a complete and total tool. Oh, sure, he wasn't your typical dumb jock. He got good grades. But he was such a …
golden boy.
A lily-white, self-centered jerk that all the teachers adored. What did he care about the queer students in school?

I scribbled on Ricky's paper. PROBLY SOMETHING FOR HIS COLLEGE RESUME. HE'LL GET BORED N SAY WELL HE TRIED. SOME IVY WILL LET HIM IN JUST FOR TRYING.

Ricky snatched the paper, read my note, and nodded with a grin.

When the bell rang, everybody gathered up their stuff. Ricky and I were headed for the door together when Mr. Olson blocked us.

“Miss Mendoza,” he said, folding his arms. “I hope this isn't going to be a problem
every
class.”

I wanted to tell him off so bad. Three weeks I sat there and listened to him drone on every day and never once did anything wrong. Except that laugh. One stupid laugh, and now I'm the class scuzzball.

“No, sir,” I said, thinking how much I'd like to sic my parents on him for singling me out. But I liked to fight my own battles. I was giving Olson this round. But if I kept my nose clean and he kept coming at me, we were going to have a problem.

Ricky and I slipped into the hall and joined the river of students. “Why does he have it in for you?” Ricky asked.

“Because I'm not
normal
,” I said, batting my eyes and flouncing like a beauty pageant contestant. “Some people are so threatened by anyone not exactly like them. But I'm playing it cool. I'm not giving him anything to nail me on the rest of the semester. I'll wet my pants before I ask for a bathroom pass, I'll hold a sneeze all hour. But he ain't getting nothing on me.”

We bumped fists and made our way down to the first floor for Mrs. Carney's Intro to Film History class. Everywhere we went, people said hi, high-fived us. We were like a power couple, only we weren't dating. Ricky was single. I didn't know for sure if he was gay or not. He'd never dated anyone, and he never wanted to talk about it. So I just let him be.

Mrs. Carney was standing by the door when we strolled in. Unlike Olson, Mrs. Carney was cool. She never played favorites. If you were being a jerk, she called you out, but then she didn't hold it against you. And where Olson just droned on and on about a book he
clearly
couldn't care less about, Mrs. Carney loved what she taught.

“Good morning, Ricky, Carmen,” she said just as the bell rang.

We took our seats in the back corner as Mrs. Carney dimmed the lights. “We'll continue our unit on Alfred Hitchcock,” she said, turning on the TV at the front of the room, “by watching
Psycho.
”

“Ree! Ree! Ree!” Ricky shrieked, doing his best impression of the
Psycho
theme. This chick in front of us jumped. Everybody laughed, including Mrs. Carney. Once the movie started, things got quiet.

About half an hour in, Ricky leaned over and said, “Is it just me, or does that Norman Bates guy look like an older version of Scott King?”

I choked back my laugh, having gotten in trouble once already for that. But he was right. Norman Bates wasn't as buff as Scott King, but they both had those clean-cut, all-American-boy looks. The resemblance was only creepier knowing what Norman Bates does in the movie.

I still couldn't believe he was trying to start a GSA.

“But, you know,” I said to Ricky, “it's not a bad idea.”

“What?”

“The GSA. That Jamie Ballard kid got bullied to death. We need a group here where the queer kids can go to feel safe and supported.”

“So, why don't
you
start the group?” he asked.

“No comments from the peanut gallery,” Mrs. Carney called out from her desk. That's what she said to shut people up during the movie. I had no idea what a peanut gallery is.

Yeah. Why didn't
I
start a GSA? There was no way Scott King was going to see it through. He'd do just enough so it looked good on his college applications and then walk away. Meanwhile, a
real
GSA could be doing
real
work.

I spent the rest of the class daydreaming what our GSA would do. By the time the bell rang, I'd had the whole alliance built, staffed, and working hard. This was gonna be awesome.

– – – – –

I ran to my locker after film class. I had a lot of plans to make to get the GSA up and running. As I got closer to my locker, I spotted Jon Renquist coming down the hall at me. He had a dopey grin on his face, which was pretty much what I'd come to expect from him. Ren wasn't known for deep thought.

As we passed, he brushed against me, knocking my books to the floor. “Watch where you're going, douchebag!” I yelled after him. I thought I heard him chuckle as he moved on without looking back.

I scooped up by books and opened my locker. A piece of paper, slipped in through the vent, fluttered to the ground. I opened and read it.

It was Jamie Ballard's obituary from the paper. Someone had written over his picture: ONE DOWN … YOU'RE NEXT, TURBO DYKE.

I

hung out at the edge of the cafeteria as lunch started. People filed through the hot lunch line and took their seats. I clutched the clipboard in my hand and suddenly felt nervous. I got a first in the state speech and debate competition last year, but now I was having trouble working up the nerve to talk to my classmates. I decided it would be best just to work on a couple people at a time. So I scanned the room and found a couple girls hanging out by the Coke machine.

“Hey,” I said, walking up to them. “Shelly, right?”

Shelly Markham and her friend looked at each other like I'd just said I was from Mars. “Uh, yeah?” she said.