Boy Meets Boy Read Free Page B

"It's the frickin' Homecoming Pride rally this afternoon. He wants me to march with the rest of the team. But as homecoming queen, I'm also supposed to be introducing the team. If I don't do the proper introductions, my tiara might be in doubt. Trilby Pope would take my place, which would be ghastly, ghastly, ghastly. Her boobs are faker than mine."

    "You think Trilby Pope would stoop that low?" I ask.

    "Is the Pope shrewish? Of course she would stoop that low. And she'd have gravity problems getting back up."

    Usually Infinite Darlene acts like she's in a perpetual congeniality contest. But Trilby Pope is her weak spot. They used to be good friends, able to recount an hour's worth of activity with three hours' worth of conversation. Then Trilby fell into the field hockey crowd. She tried to convince Infinite Darlene to join her, but football was the same season. They drifted into different practices and different groups of friends. Trilby started to wear a lot of plaid, which Infinite Darlene despised. She started to hang with rugby boys. It all became very fraught.
    Finally, they had a friendship break-up -- an exchange of heated classroom notes, folded in the shape of artillery. They averted their glances dramatically when they passed in the halls.
    Trilby still has some of Infinite Darlene's accessories, from when they used to swap. Infinite Darlene tells everybody (except Trilby) that she wants them back.

    My attention is beginning to wander from the conversation. I am still scanning the hallways for Noah, knowing full well that if I see him, I will most probably duck into the nearest doorway, blushing furiously.

    "I do declare," Infinite Darlene does declare, "what has gotten you so distracted?"

    It is here that I feel the limit of our friendship. Because while Infinite Darlene feels comfortable telling me everything, I am afraid that if I tell her something, it will no longer be mine. It will belong to the whole school.

    "I'm just looking for someone," I hedge.

    "Aren't we all?" Infinite Darlene vamps ruefully. I think I'm off the hook, but then she adds,
    "Is it someone special?"

    "It's nothing," I say, crossing my fingers. I pray that it's not nothing. Yes, I pray to my Big Lesbian God Who Doesn't Really Exist. I say to her: I don't ask for much. I swear. But I would really love Noah to be everything I hope he'll be. Please let him be someone I can groove with, and who wants to groove with me.

    My denial has sent Infinite Darlene back to her own dilemma. I tell her she should march with the football team while wearing her homecoming queen regalia. It seems like a good compromise to me.

    Infinite Darlene starts to nod. Then her eyes see something over my shoulder and flash anger.

    "Don't look now," she whispers.

    Of course, I turn and look. And there's Kyle Kimball walking by.

    Turning away from me like he might catch plague from a single bubonic glance.

    Kyle is the only straight boy I've ever kissed. (He didn't realize he was straight at the time.) We went out for a few weeks last year, in ninth grade. He is the only ex I'm not on speaking terms with. Sometimes I even feel like he hates me. It's a very strange feeling. I'm not used to being hated.

    "He'll learn," Infinite Darlene says as Kyle recedes into a classroom. She's been saying that for a year now, without ever telling me who Kyle's going to learn from. I still wonder if it's supposed to be me.

    With some break-ups, all you can think about afterwards is how badly it ended and how much the other person hurt you. With others, you become sentimental for the good times and lose track of what went wrong. When I think of Kyle, the beginnings and the endings are all mixed up. I see his enraptured face reflected in the light of a flickering movie screen; passing him a note and having him rip it into confetti-sized pieces without reading it; his hand taking mine for the first time, on the way to math class; him calling me a liar and a loser; the first