So there it was inside me, that wrongness, the way I felt about Joc. It lived, shoved down deep, a kind of spell or threat, like that song by Alanis Morissette—”Fear of Bliss.” Though I knew they were there, I never let my mind open onto the deepest feelings I had for Joc. I could feel them sometimes, moving around my gut, but if they ever came into my mind—if I ever, even for a moment, daydreamed about kissing or touching her—I would shove those thoughts back down and slam the door on them. That kind of thinking was forbidden. If we were going to be friends—best friends, the
best
of best friends, I couldn’t let myself even think about the secret flame she hadn’t seen that night in grade seven, burning between my legs.
It was the week following the river soap spill, and I was halfway through my Tuesday lunch-hour shift at the Dief library checkout desk. Leaned against the other side of the counter and wrapped in each other’s arms were Joc and Dikker, pretending to keep me company while they engaged in their favorite pastime. This meant, of course, that the last five minutes of the library’s supposed domain of silence had been punctuated by some rather
unusual sound effects, but what the hell—I was only a volunteer and not about to pull any authority trips.
It wasn’t like me to volunteer for things, but the Dief library was different. To be specific, Ms. Fowler, the librarian, was different. The majority of teachers in my school were only interested in students with cubbyhole minds, the kind of kids who could take facts coming at them from any angle and shove them into the appropriate mental-storage unit. Ms. Fowler wasn’t like that. She was more of a watcher than a coder. At first when I caught her looking at me, I would tense up, not sure what she was seeing. Because she really
observed
. Behind that mousy expression and erratic graying hair lurked more information about what went on at the Dief than in the front office computer database.
But no snaky forked-tongued comments ever came out of her—no criticisms, suggestions for improvement, or off-with-your-head statements. Maybe it was because I was a volunteer and she had to take what she could get. Or maybe it was because her career had been spent dealing with other people’s thoughts. One day last year, while I was shelving books in the fiction section, I stopped for a moment and stood, just looking at the shelf in front of me. The weirdest sensation came over me then—almost as if each book had a voice and they were all calling to me. I mean,
extremely bizarro
, I know, but it happened. And as I was standing there, listening to that shelf of books call out to me, Ms. Fowler walked over and asked what I was doing.
“One shelf of books has so many completely different ideas sitting right next to each other,” I said slowly. I wouldn’t normally say something like that to a Dief teacher, but talking to Ms. Fowler was sort of like talking inside your own head. “It’s like looking at a row of minds,” I continued, just letting the thoughts come out. “A story from Moose Jaw could be sitting
next to one from Johannesburg. Every shelf in this library is like that. It’s fantastic.”
Beside me, Ms. Fowler stood silently, her eyes roaming the shelves. “Yes,” she said finally, a tiny smile crouching in one corner of her mouth. “It is fantastic.” Then, without looking at me, she patted my arm and returned to her office. We hadn’t mentioned it since, but from that point on, whenever she saw me come into the library her eyes would flick toward the shelves and she would get that tiny smile in the corner of her mouth. And it made me feel, I dunno—
located
—to think that there was an adult in this school who actually remembered something I’d said.
Yes, in this library, with its shelves of minds waiting to be opened and Ms. Fowler’s tiny crouching smile, I felt
located
.
“Dikker!” said Joc, letting out a small shriek. Pressed against the check-out desk, she giggled breathlessly. All over the library, kids were turning to watch, some grinning, others glaring. From behind the desk, I gave them a shrug and went back to emptying the book return bin. Some days Joc’s brain simply stopped functioning. As far as I could tell, it was usually connected to the presence of Dikker Preddy.
“Hey, Dyl,” said a familiar voice. A wave of Brut washed over me, and I looked up to see Cam drop his gym bag and lean across the counter. Quirking an eyebrow at Joc and Dikker, who gave no hint of having noticed his arrival, he grinned and asked, “So, what’s the major sign-out trend for today?”
Quirking an eyebrow in reply, I said, “Ancient architecture. No one looks too happy about it either.”
“C’mon,” he said, taking hold of one of my fingers. “One of these days you’re going to tell me it’s a bunch of guys fighting over
The Joy of Sex
.”
“Not today,” I quipped back, hiding a flicker of nervousness. “I’ve already got that one signed out.”
“Ah,” he said, his eyes zeroing in. They were blue,
very
blue— the color of soft faded denim. “And what class might that be for?” he asked.
“Ancient history,” I grinned. “I decided not to do the assigned essay topic.”
Cam grinned back. “That essay will be read aloud in the staff room,” he predicted.
Next to him, Joc and Dikker’s ecstatic make-out session was continuing nonstop. Then, in one especially ecstatic moment, Dikker pressed Joc against the check-out desk, and her shoulder toppled a stack of books I’d taken out of the return bin. I mean, the guy practically had her laid out across the counter. Suddenly all the frustration I’d been trying to hide reared up in me. Picking up a hardcover thesaurus, I swatted Dikker on the head with it.
Hardcover thesauruses are ideal for this sort of thing. Immediately Dikker’s mouth detached itself from Joc’s and he straightened, rubbing the top of his head. “Jeeeeeeezus, Dyl,” he moaned. “What was that for?”
“There are people researching ancient architecture in this library,” I said, giving him a melodramatic glare and hoping against hope that he and Joc would take it as a joke. “You are distracting them. Besides, my boss, Ms. Fowler—remember her?—is due back any minute.”
“Oh, Ms. Fowler,” sniffed Joc. Patting the top of Dikker’s head, she slitted her eyes at me. “What’s she going to do, revoke our library privileges?”
“Yeah,” I said. “No more making out in the library.”
“Big deal,” said Dikker. “Thought we’d save you from another boring virgin library shift, but we can always use my car. C’mon, Joc.”
Turning, he tried to walk through the turnstile, but the alarm went off.
“That book,” I said, pointing to a paperback he was carrying. “Did you sign it out?”
“Nah,” he grunted, tossing it onto the counter. “I was looking for pictures, but there aren’t any.”
I picked it up and looked at it. By Truman Capote, the book was called
In Cold Blood
.
“Figures,” I muttered, as my extremely pissed-off best friend and her numbskull boyfriend headed out into the hall. Well, maybe not
extremely
pissed-off. Through the glass panes in the library doors, I could see Joc taking a tube of lipstick out of her purse and slathering it all over Dikker’s mouth. Then she did her own. A second later they leaned in together and gave the upper pane in the left door a simultaneous hearty smooch.
Kiss off
, I thought. Okay, the message could have been worse.
Snorting softly at their artwork, Cam picked up his gym bag. “Coming to the game tomorrow?” he asked. “It’s our first one.”
“You gonna win?” I demanded, jamming
In Cold Blood
onto a filing cart.
“If I know you’re watching, beady little eyes fixed on my working butt,” Cam grinned.
“Mmmm, yes,” I said lightly. “It is a gorgeous butt. For your butt, I just might show.”
Immediately Cam’s face lit up, and I felt like the usual shit for keeping him in that ever-hoping, never-fulfilled position. “Okay, Dyllie,” he said, slinging his gym bag over a shoulder. “I’ll call you tonight.”
With another grin he backed through the library doors, barely missing Ms. Fowler who was standing in the hall, observing the two lipsticked smooches. As usual she had on her watcher’s expression, which was pretty much the same as no expression at all. Waiting until the doors had closed behind
Cam, she took out her own tube of lipstick and wrote something underneath the smooches. Then she came into the library and headed for her office. After processing the end-of-lunch-hour check-out rush, I stopped by her office to let her know that I was leaving. As I entered, she looked up from her desk work, her head framed by a large globe that sat on the counter behind her.
“That globe,” I said, unsure as ever as to the best way to break into her silence. “I’ve never seen one that large.”
“That’s why I bought it,” she said quietly. “It’s bigger than my head. Isn’t that symbolic?”
Tiny corner grins crept into both our mouths.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it’s symbolic, Ms. Fowler.”
“Thanks for helping out today, Dylan,” she said and went back to her work.
Outside the library doors, a small crowd had gathered. Joining them, I stood scanning the comments Ms. Fowler had written in dull burgundy lipstick beneath Joc and Dikker’s scarlet smooches: READING CAN IMPROVE YOUR EXPERTISE IN ALL SORTS OF SUBJECTS! GET LITERATE!
Chapter Three
Sometimes I secretly watched Mom and Dad and wondered which of them was to blame. I mean, sexual orientation is supposed to be genetic. So it was, of course, my parents’ genes that were responsible for the body I ended up with—a skewed body, without normal hormones. Whatever was wrong with it had to have come from them. Only there didn’t seem to be anything abnormal about their love life. It was definitely hetero, and even after three kids, it was hot and happening. Sure, they fought, but they also kissed a lot and “slept in” on Sunday mornings. Every now and then they bought each other flowers and went out on dates. There were even times when I caught Dad dreamy-eyed and staring at Mom as if he was still a virginal teenager trying to imagine her with her clothes off. I swear sometimes he was about to start drooling.
Maybe what I’d gotten was a throwback gene. Dad had an uncle who’d died a while back. I’d never met him, but I knew he’d never gotten married and was thought of as the black sheep in the family. There was some kind of shameful secret attached to him that no one would explain. And then there was Aunt Chrissy, a sister of Dad’s, who was also unmarried. She hadn’t
been given the black sheep label, but she was considered odd. After graduating from high school, she’d taken off for Europe and now worked as a travel agent in Rome. I used to study her photographs for signs that she harbored skewed genes, but we didn’t look anything alike. She was definitely a Kowolski, with blond wavy hair and broad bones, and I took after Mom, who was short and slight, with straight slate-black hair and dark brown eyes. Everyone on her side of the family was tight into marriage with numerous offspring, and any divorces were soon solved with a second marriage and another kid on the way.
So the problem gene had probably come from Dad’s side of the family. And so far it looked as if I was the only one in my generation who’d gotten it. Most of my cousins were married, or heavy into dating someone from the opposite gender. My fourteen-year-old brother Danny was definitely hetero—his room was plastered with posters of Britney Spears, and by the time he’d reached grade seven, the phone was ringing off the wall with girls calling. Two weeks ago he’d started grade nine at the Dief, and I passed him in the halls at least once a day, surrounded by a bevy of girls clamoring for his attention. We looked alike—same straight black hair and dark eyes—and whenever he saw me, he would flash me a conspiratorial grin as if letting me know that he was following in my footsteps and keeping up the family tradition. So the problem gene was obviously not part of his makeup. And Keelie, my five-year-old sister—well, she was too young to define one way or the other yet.
On the other hand, she was a genetic afterthought. Certainly unexpected. Mom and Dad had counted their diaper-washing days long over when she showed up in the womb. Mom was forty-two and a full-time accountant when Keelie was born, and Dad thirty-nine. The pregnancy really upended their lives—once I even overheard them discussing an abortion. But in the end
they decided to go through with it, and the little hurricane was born seven months later. Just like Danny and me, she had Mom’s dark eyes and straight black hair. Immediately the house filled with her shrieks and bellows, and when she got her “sea legs,” as Dad put it, well, the universe became her backyard. Right now I could hear her on the other side of my bedroom door, dragging the kitchen broom between her legs as she tore up and down the hall, hollering, “Watch out, Harry! Draco’s right behind you! He’s got the snitch! No, I’ve got it. I’ve got it!”
Sprawled on my bed, I listened to her tear down the hall. About a year ago, Keelie and I started our own private tradition. Every morning at seven, she would ease open my door and poke her head into my room. She would wait there like that, her head stuck into the gap, checking to make sure I was still asleep, and then her short little figure would come tiptoeing toward me. I was always awake as soon as the door opened, but I knew my part of the deal and would continue to lie with my face burrowed into my pillow, faking sleep, while she grunted her way softly onto the foot of my bed and crawled up to my head. It was hard not to giggle as her small hand started brushing my hair back from my face, but that would have spoiled it. So I would lie with my eyes closed until she’d brushed all the hair from my face, then leaned down and whispered, “Wake up, Dylan. It is time to bring some happiness into this day.”
That was my cue to erupt with a roar and grab her tight and squealing in my arms. We would roll around for a bit, giggling our heads off until Mom poked her head in the door and said it was time to get moving. Then Keelie would slide whooping off my bed and scamper out the door, and I would watch her go, wondering if I’d been like that at her age—barreling around in a body that felt like a promise or a wish come true, riding the wave crest of my own happiness.