The Alliance (8 page)

I held up the petition. “Southside High needs a Gay–Straight Alliance. You don't have to be gay to join. You just have to care. You have to want to see everyone treated fairly. And the only way to get this to happen is to speak up. To put your name down on this piece of paper and tell the administration that you want to see the bullying end.”

A handful of students had already gathered near my table, pens in hand. I slipped the petition down to Ricky, who started lining people up for signing. I pulled my fake megaphone closer and kept at it.

“Signing this doesn't mean joining. It could mean that you're tired of staying silent. It could mean that you won't stand by anymore when you see someone getting the crap beat out of them because somebody else
thinks
that person is gay. Or it could mean that you
do
want to join and work to make Southside safe for everybody: queer, straight, or whatever.”

The signing line snaked around the nearest tables. People were banging their trays on the tables in support. The aides who monitored the lunch room—retirees with as much authority as a wet mop—were standing below, motioning me to get down. But I was on a roll.

“I won't lie to you. Some people don't want us to start this group. Some people are happy to keep things the way they are. These people are
cowards.”

The crowd grumbled their approval. Ricky gave me the thumbs-up. “We've got fifty signatures already. Keep going.”

“Yeah, I said it.
Cowards.
They're the ones who want to keep the power right where it is: with them. They hide behind fake names online, too scared to admit who they really are.”

I scanned the room. There were three lunch periods, which meant I had a one in three shot of VictorEE being here. I figured if I made him mad enough …

“Well, I'll tell you who they really are. You can't miss them.
They've got the tiniest dicks in four counties!
”

A roar of laughter rippled through the students. I held up my arms, basking in their attention.

Splat!

My head snapped to the side as something hot and wet pelted the side of my face. My vision blurred. As soon as I could see, I looked down to see a slab of meatloaf on the floor. When I turned, I found Jon Renquist standing on the table next to me, murder in his eyes. He clutched another piece of meatloaf in his left hand.

“What do you know about dicks, you ugly dyke?” Ren shouted. He pitched the meatloaf at me, but this time I ducked.

I pointed my megaphone at him. “It's like art: I know one when I see one. And guess where I'm looking right now…”

Was this really VictorEE? It totally made sense. Somehow, I found it disappointing. It was almost too obvious. Too cliché. But then, I wasn't about to give Ren points for original thinking.

When everyone went “oooh,” the veins in Ren's neck bulged with rage. “The only reason she's a lesbian is because she hasn't been with a real man.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “I'm game. Let me know as soon as you see one, Renquist.”

Ren leaped off the table and charged. The aides were flung aside as the linebacker bore down on me. I braced myself, waiting to get knocked to the ground.

But a blur swept past me and tackled Ren just before he reached the table. In an instant everyone was out of their seats and standing in a circle, chanting, “Fight! Fight!”

I moved to the end of the long table and found Ren wrestling on the ground with Scott King. Ren was bigger, but he sucked at ground fighting. In no time, Scott was on top, raining punch after punch down.

Suddenly, Ren jerked his knee up and slammed Scott in the back. A second later the tables were turned, with Ren pinning Scott's arms to the ground with his knees and landing blow after blow in Scott's stomach.

I tossed my algebra homework aside and jumped, crashing into Ren. All three of us tumbled around in the middle of the circle while the other students cheered us on. I grabbed a handful of Ren's hair and was about to punch him in the ear when a pair of powerful hands yanked me away. I looked up to find Mr. Winston pulling me back. Two other male teachers broke through the circle and separated Ren and Scott.

“It was Ren, Mr. Winston,” Scott said, his lower lip already growing fat. “He was bullying Jamie. And he's been bullying Carmen online too.”

“We'll sort that out later,” Winston said. “Right now, to the office. All three of you.”

I

sat in the mall food court at the same table where Jamie and I had spent many summers. He'd look for hot guys, and I'd look for hot girls, and we'd question each other's taste. It usually ended with one of us in a headlock. I'd have given anything to do that with him again.

It was the middle of the second day of the three-day suspension I got for fighting. Mom and Dad weren't exactly happy, but when I explained the whole story, they let me off with a warning. Said I wasn't to fight anymore.

But I had a feeling that a different kind of fight was coming. I thought about what Cory said about the GSA and what Mr. Rosencranz said about people getting upset. We were going to make a lot of people angry.

“Is this seat taken?”

I looked up to find Carmen with a tray from Sbarro. I pulled a chair out for her, and she sat.

“Enjoying your vacation?” she asked.

I squinted at her with the eye that had nearly swollen shut. “Yeah. It's been a blast.”

“A shiner works on you,” she said. “Very manly.”

I grunted. “I'll keep that in mind.”

“Hey, listen, thanks for, you know, tackling Ren. He's gotta have at least thirty pounds on you.”

“We took him on together. But I think the first order of business for the GSA is to arrange a self-defense course. We're not very good at it.”

She chuckled and gnawed on her pizza. We were quiet for a long time.

“Carmen?”

“Yeah?”

“You know before, when I said I couldn't get people to sign because they were afraid of being labeled queer or they were homophobic? It was only part true. Most people wouldn't sign because I was a jerk.”

“I kind of figured.”

“Thanks for rubbing it in.”

“No problem.”

I shook my head. “I gave people crap for a long time. I never saw it as bullying. I kept thinking, ‘I'm not beating anybody up. Bullying is when you beat people up.' Guess I got it wrong.”

She offered me a breadstick. I grabbed one and dipped it in the marinara. “Some people can go their whole lives and not realize what a dirtbag they are. At least you figured it out.”

“No. Jamie figured it out. He told me what a knob I was being.”

“Right. And you listened, you changed, and now you're trying to do the right thing. He'd be proud of you.”

I choked up, thinking about it. Looking back, I guess I always wanted Jamie to be proud of me. At least as proud as I was of him. He was the bravest guy I knew.

“Did you know Jamie?” I asked.

She nodded. “A little. We had chemistry together last year. His lab table was kitty-corner from mine. I remember he used to cackle like a mad scientist every time he poured one beaker into another:
Bwah-hah-ha!
”

I laughed. “Yep. That's Jamie.”

Carmen slurped on her soda. “So, the other day, you told Winston that Ren had been harassing me online. How'd you know about that?”

I told her about reading Jamie's Twitter stream and seeing how Ren had been bugging both Jamie and her. “He's a complete psycho. That's why I went looking for you in the cafeteria as soon as I found out. I think he really would have hurt you.”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Doesn't matter now. He may have gotten the same three-day suspension that we got, but I think it'll be a while before we see him back in school.”

“Why's that?”

“He put a death threat in my locker, and I showed it to the police.”

“You're kidding!”

“Nope. I sat on it for a long time, thinking I'd deal with it myself. The last thing I wanted was to give some jerk the satisfaction of knowing he got under my skin. But when we were getting chewed out by Winston, I realized that the only way to stop the bullying is to expose it. If we hide it, we're giving the bullies permission to keep on doing it.”

I swallowed hard. I knew just what she meant. That's why I'd never let up on Maggie. I knew nobody knew, so I figured it was okay to keep going. I was such a jerk.

“Anyway,” she said, “Ren's eighteen, so they're pressing charges. He could get expelled.”

It would suck to get expelled senior year. But he had it coming. “I'm glad you didn't get hurt.”

“So,” she said quickly, like she was trying to change the subject. “We've got a major decision to make.”

“What's that?”

“Who is going to be president, and who is going to be vice president of the GSA? I'll arm wrestle you for it.”

I leaned away in mock fear. “I've seen you in a fight. You'd rip my arm off. I'm happy to be vice president.”

“Or,” she said with a smile, “we could be co-presidents. It's a tough job. It'd be good to have somebody to help shoulder the load.”

I nodded. “Co-president? I could deal with that.”

She held out her hand, and we shook. “You know,” she said, “we had all those people sign the petition. It's no guarantee they're all gonna join the GSA.”

“School charter says any club has to have a minimum of three members. We got you, me, and your friend Ricky. The important thing is that Winston doesn't have any excuse not to sign off on the club.”

Carmen
hmphed
and rattled the ice around in her cup. “I'll believe it when I see it…”

F

irst day back from our suspension, before classes started, Scott and I went to Mr. Winston with our petition.

“As you can see,” I said, trying hard not to sound as smug as Winston usually looked, “we got one hundred student signatures. We could have gotten more, but we ran out of room. Maybe the petitions need to be bigger.”