The Babysitter Murders - By Janet Ruth Young Page 0,5
over-flowed the classroom the day it was formed. Three 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.
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JANET RUTH YOUNG
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 weak-ness 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 feels for bangs falling from her scarf. “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.
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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 inconsis-tent.”
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.
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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