Chapter 2 #2
This time it was a boy who pushed his way out and over toward Ramones Girl and Jules.
He was a wiry kid with reddish brown hair—only slightly taller than the girl.
He looked like his picture would be in The Official American Citizen Guidebook next to the description of Average Male Teenager, except he was damn near grinning his ass off as he did a faux soft shoe, even as Ramones Girl smiled widely back at him.
Then, sure enough, came another call from the crowd: “Gotta dance, gotta dance!”
And this time two more girls—one blond, one brunette—and a slightly rotund, cheerful-faced boy made their entrance.
They were all dressed in overalls with red and white checked shirts, clearly coordinated in the dorkiest yet most awesome way.
These kids were surely Ramones Girl’s posse—the lionhearted freaks and geeks of what had to be this school’s theater club.
Jules had searched for them both yesterday and the day before—he knew they’d provide a safe haven—but their first official school meeting wasn’t until the end of the month, and wherever they were in the meantime, they’d kept themselves well hidden.
Until now.
The blond girl gave McSneerface the finger.
But he ignored her, unimpressed, aiming his words at Ramones Girl. “Get the fuck out of here, Jizzabelle. Nobody cares what you think.”
Before she could respond, there was another “Gotta dance!” from the crowd. This one wasn’t quite on key, but the boy who stepped forward made up for it in volume. Surprise flashed in Ramones Girl’s eyes as she turned...
Whoever he was, he wasn’t wearing a letter jacket, but he looked as if he should’ve been. Blond hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, handsome face. Like Central Casting had sent him over as their best candidate for homecoming king or maybe class president.
And right behind him was another larger group of girls who looked as if they watched Desperately Seeking Susan twice nightly.
They were nearly as clothing coordinated as the overalls trio, but the intentionality was missing, as if this was just another regular Madonna-inspired day.
They didn’t sing, and they weren’t in unison, but they definitely agreed, “Gotta dance.” “Although I have no clue what that means,” one of them muttered.
Now the crowd was coming alive with more murmurs and movement and Homecoming Boy had to raise his voice a little to be heard. But raise it he did. “My brother’s gay and I love him,” he said. “So knock it off with the name-calling, Rodney.”
Oh, Mean Dad. You named your kid Rodney? Really?
Ramones Girl was clearly into improv, because she didn’t hesitate to take both what Homecoming Boy and Jules had said to Rodney, and respond.
“Oh my God,” she said, moving toward Homecoming Boy, also projecting to be heard over the crowd, like the seasoned performer that she so clearly was, “that is so hot!”
She gestured furtively to her posse, hissing “Shelly, Sadie, Hob!” and the two girls and younger boy snapped to it, leaping into action, following her lead as they all draped themselves on Homecoming Boy, stroking his chest, murmuring, “So so hot!” even as the blond girl continued to glare at Rodney.
Homecoming Boy was a little flustered. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s... thank you, but, oh! Yeah, no thank you...”
Average Boy hung back, just watching, his eyes brimming with amusement. “I don’t know, Rod,” he said to McSneerface. “You might want to drop that word from your vocab.”
“You wish, faggot.”
Average Boy just laughed, completely unperturbed. “I do wish because I have a friend who’s gay, and he doesn’t like that word. You can call me whatever you want, but really, it says way more about you than me.”
Ramones Girl was paying attention. She left her friends behind as she undraped herself from Homecoming Boy. “Oh, my God, that is so hot, too!”
This time instead of merely leaning her head against his shoulder and seductively running her hand down his chest, she wrapped both arms around Average Boy’s neck, plastered herself against him, and kissed the living shit out of him.
He, of course, was more than ready for it. No wonder this kid was smiling all the time.
Of course this was when a teacher descended, loudly clapping his hands as if they were unruly animals. “All right, all right, that’s enough, break it up, where are you all supposed to be? Not here. Get to class. Move it, come on, let’s go.”
It was Jules’s history teacher, who was a man about his mom’s age—definitely an education-as-a-second-career teacher.
There were a few of them in this school.
Mostly retired military. This guy, Mr. Harrison, was a little gruff, a little scary, a little worn down by life.
But the reading list he’d handed out for his class was excellent.
As the crowd dispersed, McSneerface and his merry band of mouth-breathers slunk off, too, leaving the acting troupe, Homecoming Boy, and the Madonna-wanna-bes behind with Jules and Mr. Harrison.
Ramones Girl was still soul-kissing Average Boy, though, and Mr. Harrison sighed heavily.
“Okay, Ms. Sanchez, that’s enough,” he said.
Ramones Girl broke off the kiss to loudly exhale her disgust, “Hello, I’m not kissing myself here!”
Average Boy was laughing. “Nah, Belle, I’m pretty sure I’m your prop in this skit.”
“Never,” she vowed dramatically, and kissed him again.
“Ms. Sanchez and Mr. McCall,” Harrison said again. “Your point was very clearly received.”
“Rodney’s pretty stupid,” Ramones Girl—Belle Sanchez—bounced easily from soul-kissing Average McCall to arguing with the teacher. “Sometimes it takes a while.”
“I swear, he used to be smart and funny,” the blond girl with the ready middle finger chimed in, “but now he’s got the IQ of an oozing pustule on an angry sphincter.”
Harrison, meanwhile, had turned to Jules. “I see you’ve met the theatre group, Mr. Cassidy.”
Jules had to clear his throat before speaking for the first time in a long, fascinating while. “I was thinking maybe it was the gay-straight alliance.”
Belle gasped and looked sharply over at the teacher. “Can we...?” She turned back to Jules. “This stupid school doesn’t have one. Yet.” Back to Harrison. “We need one. Desperately.”
He sighed and shrugged. “You know the drill, Belle,” he said. “Find a sponsor.”
She smiled at him by bearing all of her teeth and stretching her mouth wide even as she lifted her eyebrows. “I think we just did.”
Harrison was unfazed. “Get twenty-five people to sign up and sure. I’ll do it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, then turned to her posse. “He doesn’t think we can. Hobbit, you got some paper?”
“Always, my queen.” The round-faced boy was Hobbit, which tracked.
“Get everyone here to sign up, please,” Belle ordered. She raised her voice. “Everyone! Don’t go anywhere yet! Sign our petition for a GSA!”
“That’s twelve,” Harrison pointed out. “Thirteen to go. Get to class.” But then he stopped and turned back to Jules. “You got a minute, after school today? You don’t take the bus right?”
“No, sir. I drive,” Jules said. One of the perks of having a dead father. Jules had inherited his car.
Harrison nodded as if he knew exactly that. “Stop in to my classroom,” he said. “Give me, you know, a few minutes after the last bell to hit the head. The bathroom.”
“Okay,” Jules said. Am I in trouble?
Amazingly, Harrison read his mind. “You’re not in trouble, kid,” he said quietly. “Just a quick check-in. SOP for seniors.”
“SOP?” Jules asked.
“Standard operating procedure,” Harrison said. “Sorry, military speak. Hard to break the habit. Today work for you?”
“Actually, sir,” Jules said, because he’d finally met people who he wanted to hang out with after school, assuming please God that they’d want to hang with him, too, “Monday would be better.”
“Oh. Good.” Harrison seemed delighted with that. His smiles, while rare, were warm. “In fact, yeah, that’s great. Monday it is.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Hey, Mr. H, will you sign our petition to start a gay/straight alliance?” Belle stopped the man from walking away.
“I’m a teacher, Isabelle,” he said in exasperation. “You need twenty-five kids to—”
“You said people,” she countered. “Get twenty-five people to sign. Last time I checked, you’re a person, so...”
“Twenty-five people who are students in this school,” he clarified. “Jesus you wear me out. Where are you supposed to be?”
“Lunch,” she said.
“Go. Eat.”
“We will,” she said laughing again as she danced away from him. Somehow she’d already conjured up an actual clipboard to which she'd affixed Hobbit’s appropriately lavender-colored paper, and she handed it now, with a flourish and a pen, to Jules.
Who signed it, yes, on line number twelve.
“I think Jules is a pretty name,” Belle said.
“Thank you,” he said, smiling up at her. “I’ve always thought so, too.”
“Let me see your schedule,” she demanded, hand out, “because I think we’re in your English class.”
“Really?” Jules asked, juggling the clipboard and pen as he pulled his list of classes from the back pocket of his jeans. “I don’t think so.” He hadn’t seen her there, and he absolutely would’ve noticed.
“Yup,” Belle said unfolding the tattered sheet.
“We’re in AP, too—me and Tom. But yikes, you’re in Advanced Calc.
We count on our fingers, so a hard no to that.
But, ooh, Spanish—the Esses, they’re juniors, they’re with us in that one.
Es una fiesta, Senior Cassidy! And bingo!
You also have history with Mr. H! I’m in love with him—no offense, Tom. ”
Average McCall—Tom—smiled easily and by now it was very clear that he wasn’t even remotely average, not even close. “None taken.”
“He does this weekly thing called All the History We’re Not Teaching You, and it’s appropriately enraging and we all get to rant and it’s so much fun!
” She moved farther down Jules’s class list. “This is crazy, you’re in our art class!
Hobbit’s in that, too. He’s only a sophomore, but his art skills are mad.
All you’re missing is Theatre Arts. We can fix that easily enough—you’ve got study hall.
Ta dah!” She handed the list back to him with a flourish.
“Welcome to Bullshit High,” she continued. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you on your first day. Tom and I were out on strike.”
“They went to the beach,” one of the girls—Sadie, the blonde in overalls—informed him.
“Save the whales,” Tom said.
“But they got caught,” Hobbit said mournfully.
“And they got suspended,” Shelly-in-overalls-with-long-dark-hair chimed in. “For an entire day.”
“So we went back to the beach,” Belle said as beside her Tom smiled and shrugged, like What are you gonna do?
Jules was laughing. “Can I just ask... Gotta dance. Is that... some kind of practiced bit?”
“Nah,” Tom said. “That was just in the moment. Belle being Belle.”
“So when you stepped forward,” Jules asked Belle, “and it felt like you were on stage...”
Belle nodded emphatically. “Totally,” she said. “It felt, like, spotlight! It just popped out of my mouth.”
“And since we’ve all done a lot of improv together,” Shelly said.
“And since we’ve watched Singing in the Rain four thousand times,” Hobbit added.
“It seemed to be the right response, because fuck that shit Rodney was saying!” Sadie looped her arm around Hobbit’s shoulders and smooched him noisily on the side of his face.
“How dare he?” Belle agreed, doing the exact same thing to Jules.
Which made him laugh as he looked around at all of them. “I love you,” Jules said. “Can we please be friends?”
Belle smiled at him. “Silly Rabbit, you had us at Silly Rabbit. Come, we’ll show you where we lunch—far from the madding crowd.”
Lunch. Where he’d been intending to finish writing that long, long letter to David, asking him to reconsider their break-up, asking him to at least give long-distance a try. Asking? Try begging.
Belle was holding out her hand for him, and Jules hesitated only very slightly before he took it. Because how had Sadie put it? Fuck that shit.
Fuck all the shit—David included.