Chapter Seven
Gay Ass Letters
The bullying began the next day. When they came back from lunch, the word FAG was spray painted across both their backpacks.
Hilary managed to keep from reacting, since the perpetrators were sure to be watching, but he couldn’t help the way his chest contracted, his lungs unable to take a proper breath.
It was happening again. Hilarina Ballerina.
He put a smile on his face, pictured his father, and tried to copy that delighted smile he’d seen so many times. “Look, Trent. We match.”
Trenton had frozen when he’d seen Hilary’s desk, though it took hearing those words to look toward the back of the classroom, noticing his own bag for the first time. It seemed to help. The boy touched the lettering done over in pink.
Annette was apoplectic when she saw them. “I’m going down there.”
Hilary had thought about trying to hide it from her.
It was what he’d done the last time. But that hadn’t ended well, and anyway, hiding it would require buying a new bag—something he didn’t have the money for, especially if it was only going to be ruined again.
And anyway, he was done with hiding. “Why? It’s kind of cute. Trent thinks so too.”
“They do match,” Trenton said. The idiot wasn’t even faking it. He’d warmed continually to the idea throughout the day “Though the bags themselves aren’t the same. Where did you buy yours, Hil? Do you think the bullies would do it for me again if I gave them a new one?”
Hilary laughed, and it was only a little forced. It did feel better knowing he wasn’t the only target. But he felt guilty about that too.
“If you keep away from me at school, they may leave you out of it,” he offered, though it made the panic rise in him to say so.
Trenton wouldn’t hear of it. Seemed even to be insulted by the thought. “Aren’t we friends?” And then added, looking almost nervous, “Do you not want to be friends?”
Hilary hadn’t known relief had a taste—a mixture of copper and saliva. He swallowed it down and felt his chest open up a little. “We’re friends.” Trenton didn’t know it, but it was his very first time saying the words. Trenton’s too, likely. They’d both been in the pariah club for too long.
And with that, Trenton took abrupt hold of his arms, stiff as anything, unsure of himself, but clearly thinking he ought to be doing something for the occasion. “I wasn’t sure,” the boy said. “It felt like how friendship is in books, but I’m not good at knowing things in real life.”
Hilary felt a little shaky with that, like he was going to cry. And maybe Trenton felt it too, because he ducked his head, still holding onto Hilary’s arms, and said with uncharacteristic hesitation, “Can I stay over tonight?”
“Yeah.” Hilary wanted to do that too. To take hold of Trenton’s arms, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He felt so clumsy and stupid and shy. “You don’t have to ask.”
“But I like hearing you say yes.”
The boy really could say the cringiest shit.
The next day was worse. They were smart enough to take their bags with them when they went to lunch, but when they returned to the classroom, there was semen on their desks and smeared into their textbooks.
Hilary probably would have recognized it for what it was regardless, but the empty condom wrappers helped.
It brought the fear back, and not lightly.
He couldn’t afford to replace his textbooks.
When he went to Varda, he struggled to keep his voice even. “Knock it off.”
She turned those pretty eyes up at him. “Knock what off?”
“Do you know how expensive textbooks are?”
“I can think of one way for you to get money.”
He might have taken her up on it. It wasn’t just his own books that had been ruined, after all. But Trenton took him by the wrist and dragged him away. “Don’t talk to her.”
“She’s responsible for this. If I accept her offer—”
“And for the rest of the year have her around while I’m with you? Don’t. I’ll buy the books. Don’t make me share you with her.”
Hilary had to ask. And it wasn’t because of the condoms or the spray paint. “Do you—” But he had no idea how to make the words come out. How did you form words like that? And say them out loud?
But Trenton knew what he was asking. “So to be in your life I have to want to fuck you? Is that it?”
The boy didn’t shout the words. His voice was even as always.
But he was angry, and it frightened a weenie like Hilary to hear it.
Even knowing the anger wasn’t directed his way, and that Trenton was the only person in school who cared about him, it was frightening.
“It’s just that you’re nice. You’re too nice to me.
And the things you say. No one else says things like that. ”
“Yes, they do.”
“In books, but not—”
“I’m not going to be an asshole just to fit your notion of friendship. I finally found you. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to find you.”
That was just more evidence against the boy. Trenton could have grabbed him by the face and shoved his tongue down his throat, and it wouldn’t have been more shocking to Hilary than those words were. But Trenton still wasn’t done.
“People like me—we don’t get chosen. We live our quiet lives just trying not to take up space, hoping to get through each day so we can disappear into a book by the end of it.
But you chose me. When you came to talk to me, and when you asked for help with the math.
You didn’t mean for it to become anything.
But what else could I do? I had to try. With you—because it was you—I had no choice but to try. ”
Hilary’s eyes were prickling. It was the words, yes. Words he’d never heard in his life. But also the tone. Trenton was still calm, or trying to be, but it was like he’d spent the whole morning reading aloud; his voice was hoarse with it.
Hilary was forced to look down, unable to meet that earnest expression head-on. “I’m ordinary. I’m so ordinary, Trent. I’m not even smart, why would you—”
Trenton hugged him, though it was more accurate to say he grabbed him, those arms like a vise. “I wanted this,” the boy said, meaning the embrace, “I wanted to do this since the night of the party.”
That was impossible to believe. “While we were sorting through the garbage?”
“When you offered the trade. To teach me while I taught you.”
So even earlier, then.
“But that was selfish,” Hilary objected. “I needed you more than you needed me.”
“I’ll always need you.” Trenton’s face was in his shoulder, a little muffled, but not enough to obscure the words.
It left Hilary helpless, his hands raised, hovering there at the boy’s back. “This isn’t normal. What you’re saying—whatever’s happening—”
“And you want to be normal, do you? Because you were enjoying it so much. Your girlfriend and your fake friends.”
It came again—that urge to hit him. No, not hit him.
Hilary wasn’t sure what it was, but it made his hands clench, and finally, finally, he was able to grab hold, his fingers crushing Trenton’s shirt in his hands.
“I’m not worth it. You’re going to see. You’re going to be so embarrassed when you wake up and realize. ”
“Then let me be embarrassed,” Trenton said. “I promise you’ll be waiting longer than I will.”
“Fuck you. If life were that easy—”
“But it is easy, Hilary. Even making your parents like me was easy, and parents never like me.”
“You haven’t ever tried to make other parents like you.”
But Trenton was selectively hearing again. “It’s not being with you that’s hard. I hated it at work this weekend, and I thought the bookstore was my home. It’s the only job I’ve ever liked, but I wanted to be with you. I wanted to be teaching you the math you hate so much.”
“You shouldn’t care like this.” Hilary felt an urgency underneath all of it. A feeling of tilting, like choices were happening. Things he couldn’t name. “It’s abnormal to care this much and this quickly. You’re sick.”
“And I’m the only one, am I? The only one who’s sick?”
Hilary did hit him then, shoving at him to try and break free, but Trenton wouldn’t let him go.
“You find me easy, too. Easier than I did. I was aiming for you, Hilary. Thinking about you since I saw you in the studio this summer. But you—you just fell into it, adapting your life around me like you’d always meant to do it. ”
It was an accusation too difficult to face and impossible to refute. He didn’t try. “What time in the studio?”
“You refused me before, but I’ve already seen you dance. Twice, actually. You really don’t notice anything when you’re occupied.”
“That’s because you’re so quiet. Always sneaking up on me.”
“I found the studio about a week after you moved here,” Trenton said.
“I bike past it when I go to work, and your mother was taping a sign to the window. She made me come inside for a drink because it was hot, and once she was certain I wasn’t about to drop dead, she asked if I liked to dance.
I said I’d never done it, and she told me to come to a class to try it out.
I didn’t mean to do it. What would an oaf like me do in a ballet class except scare off all the kids and maybe snap the bar off the wall?
But I was curious enough to look. I’d never seen real ballet before. When I came, you were there.”
Hilary had already heard too much embarrassing shit, so what was one more thing? But he was embarrassed. Enough to hide his face in Trenton even when he was supposed to be pushing him away. “You’re so dumb. If you say romantic stuff like that, of course I’m going to think you’re in love with me.”
“So friends can’t be romantic?”
“Not anymore. Maybe in the 1800s when they used to write those gay-ass letters to each other.”
Trenton laughed, and for a second, Hilary forgot what they were talking about, too stupidly pleased with himself to have made it happen. But then he did remember, and he was embarrassed again.