Things I Shouldn't Think Page 2

  But he’s okay. Nothing has happened.

  “Dani,” Gabler says in his usual way. “You with us?”

  Dani nods and sings louder. Her left palm tingles as if it’s had contact with Gabler’s privates. When Gabler turns to the baritones, Dani rubs her hands together. It seemed so real. Did I really touch him? she wonders. But no one looks shocked. No one yells or stares or reacts. While Dani tries to focus on the music, her imagination keeps running ahead. Now it fills in all the reactions of her group mates. Meghan, Shelley, Gordon—what would they think? I guess she’s not getting that solo. I guess she’s not my friend anymore. Well, she’s kinda cute, but I guess she’s plain crazy.

  Dani closes her eyes for a minute. She feels panicky. Maybe she’ll have to drop out of Hawtones. She doesn’t know how she can keep coming to practice if Mr. Gabler’s VPL continues to show.

  She brushes her left hand against her skirt.

  “Hey, Shell,” Dani asks after class, “did I seem . . . weird in there? Was I acting unusual?”

  “Weird and unusual how?”

  “Well . . .” What can I say? “Did I seem to interact, like, oddly with Mr. Gabler? Or did I move differently?”

  “You closed your eyes when Gordy was massaging you. You turned red a few times. So no, nothing unusual for you. If you didn’t turn into a goofball around Gordy, that would be unusual.”

  “My knees felt rubbery right then,” Dani says. “I could hardly stand up.”

  “Will you try for that lead?” Shelley asks.

  “Not if Meghan wants it.”

  “What Meghan wants,” Shelley responds, “Meghan gets. And that’s the way it should be.” She sticks “Old Cape Cod” into her backpack as they head to lunch.

  4

  Kinda cute. That was how Malcolm Pinto would describe Dani and her pal. Dani is a little too tall, a little too athletic, a little too everything, and that a cappella crowd is too smiley and sunshiney, as if an enema of Tang, Gummi Bear vitamins, and major chords has been shoved up their butts.

  But getting back to Dani. She has a long, tall tennis build—square shoulders from walloping those serves, no hips, and in between a stretched-out triangle. The only thing that saves Dani from seeming like a rich bitch is that everything touching her seems like it’s been hung in the sun on a really bright day. Her clothes look brighter and whiter than anyone else’s, like the outfit she has on now, a pink hoodie over a white ribbed tank top and a faded denim skirt. The bits of jewelry she wears are made of string or rope, as if she made them from scraps on the deck of a sailboat. Her hair is reddish blond (Malcolm’s dad, who likes to help Malcolm evaluate the looks of the various high school girls, corrected him once by saying “strawberry blond,” savoring the term as if he was reading something nice off a menu) with pale gold glimmers that are probably natural. She’s hot, but her hotness is combined with another term. He hates to say it: She’s merry.

  Shelley is cute too, in a smaller, darker way. She has the sparkpluggy, power-at-the-core type of tennis build, and she wears simple clothes like polo shirts and bandannas and high-top sneakers. “That’s a baby dyke if I’ve ever seen one,” Malcolm’s dad, Michael Pinto, said when Malcolm pointed her out. Malcolm had felt admiration for his dad, who, because of his police work, not only knew what went on in the world, but had a shorthand term for any situation you could come across. “Nothing new under the sun, my boy,” he would say. “Nothing your old man hasn’t seen before.”

  Malcolm takes a drag off his cigarette and watches the two girls come into the courtyard.

  5

  “Let’s eat outside,” Shelley says. “I need to talk.”

  It’s not a great day. Drizzle sticks to the air like a coating of hairspray. But Dani and Shelley don’t mind because they’re outdoor fiends, the sporty type. Other outdoor fiends, nicotine addicts like Malcolm Pinto, stand behind the potted shrubs near Dani’s favorite bench, hiding cigarettes under their sleeves. Others are nature lovers who relate better to trees, clouds, and grass than to people. Still others are antisocial, and the courtyard is the farthest from their peers they can get.

  “What’s up?” Dani asks when they open their dips. Since they met in day care, they’ve called lunch “dips.” Each of them brings a dip and dipper to share: Cheez-Its with yogurt, cashews with mango salsa, Oreos with peanut butter.

  “I need to tell you something,” Shelley says. She looks scared, serious. Will today be the day? Dani wonders.

  Shelley tucks her bangs inside her hat. “You and I have spent a lot of years together.”

  “True,” Dani says.

  “And we agree on a lot of things.”

  Dani nods.

  “We’ve got a ton of stuff in common.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We have a lot of the same opinions? We view life the same way?” A question has crept into Shelley’s voice, making Dani nod again.

  “But there’s a difference between us. And it’s as big as it can be between best friends.”

  “What do you mean?” Dani asks.

  “I’m gay, Dani.” Shelley takes a deep breath. “I’m gay. That’s what I need to tell you.”

  What can Dani say? She can say “I know.” But that would spoil Shelley’s dramatic moment. Still, Dani does know. And she’s waited years for Shelley to tell her what she already knows.

  When they were ten or eleven, Shelley would claim to like the boy most other girls liked, as if crushes were decided by acclamation and not by a sickening, weakening, all-consuming feeling in your gut that said This one and no other. Shelley would pass notes saying “OMG he is adorable,” but the notes rang false. Since junior high, Shelley’s been quick to defend various airheaded girls Dani dislikes, girls who act narcissistic, which Shelley interprets as confidence. Those two things set Shelley apart from most other girls Dani knew. Once, during a high school tennis match, a spectator told the person next to her, “That girl’s a lesbo. Look at the way she walks.” Dani went to the sidelines and said, “All of us jock girls walk like that,” and the woman kept her mouth shut for the rest of the match.

  And last winter, Dani and Shelley were shopping in a music store downtown when two women walked in. They had short haircuts and wore similar black parkas, and although they were white, one pushed an Asian toddler in a stroller.

  “Look at those two,” a college-aged guy in the guitar section said. “Look at the twins. Hey, are you two sisters?”

  “My mommy is a resbian,” his friend said in a fake Chinese accent, and the guys around him snickered. Shelley laughed too, but she looked as if her own life sucked and the women’s lives sucked and she couldn’t imagine life ever not sucking.

  “Jerks!” Dani yelled at the guys. “Jerks, jerks, jerks!” She grabbed Shelley’s sleeve and pulled her around the block where they could have their pictures taken with a giant elf and get free hot chocolate. Then she started waiting, thinking, Any day now she’ll tell me.

  Still, today she can’t decide how to react to an announcement that was intended to surprise Dani and make their friendship closer. If she acts surprised, she’ll be dishonest to her best friend. If she says “I know,” she’ll mock Shelley’s courage and make Shelley look ridiculous.

  “Dani,” Shelley repeats. “Did you hear me? I just came out to you. I’m gay.”

  Dani notices, over Shelley’s shoulder, Malcolm Pinto watching them. Can he hear what Shelley’s saying?

  “You’re shocked,” Shelley says. “You don’t know what to say.”

  “No.”

  “You’re the first one I’m coming out to, you know.”

  Dani fiddles with a pack of cookies. “How long have you known?”

  “A couple of years. Don’t tell anyone, Dani.”

  “What about the Gay-Straight Alliance?” Dani asks. “Are you out there?” Theoretically, gay students at Hawthorne High have a lot of support. At least sixty kids are part of the GSA—they overflowed the classroom the day it was formed. T
hree gay teachers advise the club.

  “You don’t think people in the GSA are necessarily that supportive, do you?” Shelley says. “That’s just the hot organization to belong to. It looks really open-minded but in fact it’s a load of crap.”

  “Wow,” Dani says. “I assumed everyone in the club was sincere.”

  “Don’t kid yourself.” Shelley closes her tub of pepperoni with mustard. “It’s still as hard as ever to be gay. Or lesbian, or not sure what you are.”

  “You know better than I do whether people in the club are prejudiced,” Dani shrugs. “Maybe people in school act different around me. More accepting.”

  “That’s because you’re straight.”

  “But they thought you were straight, didn’t they?”

  Shelley stares like Dani is obtuse. Dani watches the kids sneaking smokes behind Shelley. Malcolm is dramatically furtive. He smokes Camels without filters and usually goes back inside sporting tobacco in his teeth.

  “I’m not shocked,” Dani finally says. “You are my best friend and I love you no matter what.” Immediately she regrets the “no matter what,” because it suggests there’s something wrong with being gay. The right words and the wrong words are tying Dani up in knots. Again she wishes she could tell Shelley she had already known.

  Shelley wraps an arm around Dani, and they tilt their heads together as they have since day care. “I love you too, no matter what,” Shelley says. But it feels awkward.

  Dani waits for Shelley to tell her more. To talk about some bad times. Being embarrassed. Being rejected and feeling left out. Overhearing that joke in the music store and not knowing how to react. Or maybe Shelley wants to talk a new way, an open way, about the person she likes. Dani would overlook Shelley’s weakness for narcissistic people.

  “So, are you . . . involved with anyone?” Dani asks. “Or do you want to be?”

  “I haven’t gotten involved with anyone yet,” Shelley says. She touches the bangs falling from her hat. “Dani, this has to be a secret. It has to be, because of my parents. It wouldn’t be okay with them.”

  Dani pictures Shelley as a vulnerable creature being born. Just cracking from an egg, her skin a delicate membrane more easily bruised than Dani’s. The shell of the egg is lavender, the color of the Gay-Straight Alliance. Shelley may seem tough, but people must treat her delicately. Dani holds the eggshell of Shelley’s gayness in her hand. How does she know I won’t crush it? She imagines saying something hideous to Shelley, that she doesn’t fit in, that she is evil. You are a freak, she pictures herself saying. You are unfit to be my friend. Or my tennis partner.

  No! No! Dani thinks. Shelley is not a freak. She is a great friend and an awesome person. I would never intentionally say something so hurtful to Shelley. Still, she feels nervous, like the wrong word will leap out. A person could say anything, right? A person could be a great friend one day and then lose control and become a sucky, mean friend the next. The courtyard seems to brim with nasty possibilities.

  Dani sits up straight and looks into Shelley’s eyes. “You are my best friend,” she says. “I will absolutely keep your secret.”

  “Thanks,” Shelley says. She holds on to the rubber tips of her sneakers, and she looks like the little kid Dani met in day care. “I feel better knowing that someone knows.”

  “It’s an honor to be the first.” There. That’s something true. “Can you hit for a while right at two fifteen?” Dani asks. “I feel like some of the shots I used to be sure of have gotten inconsistent.”

  Shelley sits back as if she’s been struck by something. “I can’t believe I just poured my guts out to you and you’re already talking about tennis. I still have a weird out-of-body feeling from coming out to you.” She wipes the front of her cargo pants as if her embarrassment is a bunch of cracker crumbs that a dab of peanut butter is causing to stick.

  Oh no, Dani thinks. I can’t do anything right.

  6

  Later that afternoon, Dani jumps up the steps to Alex’s. She’s running late. She felt bad about Shelley getting short shrift at lunch, so she mentioned Shelley’s orientation again after their tennis practice. They flopped onto the grass, and the conversation about being gay turned into a conversation about Meghan that used up Dani’s travel time.

  Alex appears inside the screen door.

  “Sorry, guy,” Dani says.

  “Mom’s mad, but not a lot mad.”

  As she enters he backs up, talking the whole time. “Do you want to see my new e-Pet? It’s a horse named Louie.”

  “Sorry!” Dani yells upstairs.

  “It’s okay!” Mrs. Alex yells back. From the sound of things, Mrs. Alex is talking to the hospital, putting on her heels, and styling her hair all at once. “Glad to know you made it, that’s all.”

  Of course I made it. When have I ever not made it? Dani thinks.

  Dani hates letting people down, especially Alex and Mrs. Alex. Alex is so cute and heartbreaking. Alex’s father left when Alex was only four. Dani tries to be extra fun so Alex won’t miss his dad. She should have told Shelley she was pressed for time, but that would have meant letting Shelley down. Whenever Dani gets too busy, someone in her life gets cheated, and today it’s Alex.

  But there will be compensation. Because he sometimes asks about her matches, Dani used some of her babysitting money to buy him a junior racket, a really good one with the same features as hers but only twenty-one inches long. She wants to give him lessons once a week when school’s out. Maybe when Alex gets to Hawthorne High he’ll be captain of the boys’ team.

  “I’ll go calm your mother down,” she tells Alex.

  “There you are!” Mrs. Alex says. She wears a lab coat but snazzes things up with silver hoop earrings and pink lipstick.

  “Anything new with the kiddo?” Dani asks.

  Mrs. Alex is a nurse practitioner, which she says is as good as a doctor. She’s distracted most of the time, but in many ways she’s easier to talk to than Dani’s mom. She has a philosophy that Dani can get behind. She’s been through some rough times, but she believes that no matter what, you have to place a high value on yourself. She was in love with Alex’s father at the beginning, and tells exciting stories about meeting him on a sailboat and him getting five passengers through a thunderstorm. She thought he owned the sailboat, but friends told her later he didn’t. Then followed a year-by-year landslide of her admiration, and eventually she realized that he was not good enough for her, and she asked him to leave. Now she only mentions him when she has to, not using his name (Patrick) or the phrase “my ex-husband” but the phrase “Alex’s father.” That makes it seem like Patrick is someone in Alex’s life but not Mrs. Alex’s—a friend of Alex whom Alex had once introduced her to. Alex talks about Patrick when his mom isn’t around. He tells stories about feats of heroism, like flying a helicopter through the middle of an iceberg. Maybe all those adventures spring from the sailboat story, and Alex carries in his genes the infatuation Mrs. Alex first felt when meeting Patrick. Dani thinks of Alex’s version as Tarzan Daddy.

  What can she do with Alex for the next eight hours to compensate for his losing his adventurous father? And will there be anything for her to eat when she gives Alex his supper? Mrs. Alex keeps promising she’ll stock up on food for Dani, but she usually forgets. Often there’s been nothing for Alex, either, and Dani walks him the six blocks to McDonald’s.

  Mrs. Alex jingles her keys. “Nothing really new. He still has a slight ear infection. I’ll be home after eleven.”

  How does that feel, bitch?

  Dani has a picture of herself getting the junior racket from Alex’s room and whacking the side of Mrs. Alex’s head. Mrs. Alex’s eyes roll up. She sways for a minute before hitting the ground. Not Mrs. Alex. Not Mrs. Alex. I would never hit or hurt her. I would complain about her, sure, but I would never hit or hurt her. I wouldn’t call her the B word either. I basically like Mrs. Alex. I don’t know why I would even think that. While having all these though
ts, Dani listens to Mrs. Alex talk. She tries to focus on her employer’s instructions. She touches her own lips to make sure she hasn’t spoken while Mrs. Alex is speaking. That she hasn’t said the B word. The vision of Mrs. Alex collapsing was so real that Dani goes to Alex’s room to check that the racket is still where she left it. She touches her mouth again and rubs her hands. Then she follows Mrs. Alex downstairs.

  When Dani sees the TV she remembers that murder in Dorchester. She had forgotten about it since Saturday. She remembers that she thought about Alex being murdered. She pictured him on a stretcher, under a blanket. It was awful. It was upsetting. It wasn’t real and it didn’t happen. She made herself stop thinking about it. Then they played some more and she felt better. They ate chicken and she did her homework. After she put him to bed she checked him once an hour and he was fine. But now the pictures come back, although she tries to push them aside. She doesn’t understand why they’re back again, since she thought she dealt with them last time. Now Dani imagines Alex lying on his bedroom floor with a kitchen knife beside his body. All the stuff that’s usually inside is showing. She talks extra loud to drive the thought away.

  “Have a good night at work!” she tells Mrs. Alex, putting her hand on Alex’s shoulder.

  This is bad, Dani thinks. I feel terrible and I just got here. What’s wrong with me?

  Mrs. Alex stops in the doorway. “What about you? How was school? How’s the boy?”

  “He has no idea. It’s painful. You know.”

  “Louie’s a boy,” Alex says. “Do you want to see him?”

  Dani has tons of homework, but she pities Alex for the usual reasons, so she sits with him at the computer. She puts her arm around Alex but she feels funny touching him, because even though she hasn’t said or done anything wrong, she’s ashamed. She’s ashamed of her imagination and her thoughts. She wants more than anything to relax and stop working her mind so hard and be normal. Mrs. Alex will be gone for eight hours tonight. Will I be having these thoughts the whole time I’m here? Dani wonders.