delicious. Cheeseburgers, though the cheese is neither yellow nor processed and probably has a French name I can’t pronounce and the burger resembles a burger only in form. Kobe beef, according to the tiny flag stuck in its center, as if this designation is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Thug life, my ass.
It’s Gem’s world, I think not for the first time. The rest of us just get to live in it.
“Exactly. I sit there and listen to those girls say stupid crap and I just pretend I can’t hear them because it’s all so dumb, it doesn’t seem worth it. But I don’t know. I should have said something. And I wish I had seen her foot.”
“It’s not your job to protect me,” I say, and reflexively reach up and press the bruise.
“Still. I should have. Does it hurt?” he asks, and his hand goes out as if to touch my face, and then he thinks better of it, brings it back to his side.
“Yeah, a little,” I admit.
“You deserve…I don’t know…” Ethan shrugs, and for a moment, I think he may be blushing. I hear Agnes and Dri in my head: He’s damaged. He’s never ever dated anyone at Wood Valley. “Not that…”
“You know what I deserve? An A in English,” I say, and Gem can suck it, because Ethan and I toast with our gourmet cheeseburgers.
—
“Thank you,” I tell Theo later, on the ride home, as we glide past little houses and minimalls with signs written in Korean and car washes and a vast array of fast-food franchises. A million non-Kobe hamburgers to choose from.
“It was nothing.”
“Well, I appreciate it. You didn’t have to.” I pretend to be deep in concentration as I make a tricky left turn, but really I feel shy. This thank you feels somewhat like an I’m sorry, though I’m not sure why. Recently, my existence feels like everyone else’s burden.
“Gem once called me a faggot,” he says, so low that at first I’m not sure I heard correctly.
“Seriously?”
“Yup. I mean, it was a million years ago, and it was actually the first time I had ever even heard the word. So I went home and asked my dad. I actually said to him, like, ‘Daddy, what’s a faggot?’ ” Theo looks out the window, his hand up against the glass, like a child trapped on a long road trip, desperate for human connection from the other passengers on the road.
There’s nothing lonelier than a hand on glass. Maybe because it’s so rarely reciprocated.
“What did your dad say?” I’m curious about Theo’s father, whether Rachel has some sort of type. I picture him as bigger than my dad and more handsome, dressed in shirts with little polo players and pressed-by-Gloria khakis. There aren’t pictures of him around, which would be weird, but then I realize there aren’t very many pictures at all. Like Theo has arrived into almost-adulthood in this current form and shape, nothing to prove he was once a dimply baby.
The walls of my old house were covered with pictures of my family. Each of my school photos were framed and mounted in chronological order, even the ones where I was caught with my eyes closed or with a messy ponytail or in that horrible awkward phase when I had both braces and baby fat. My own personal time line leading upstairs.
Who knows? Maybe Rachel thinks family photos, like color, clash with her decor.
“My dad was great about it, actually. Said it’s not a nice word, that there are better words for boys who like boys. And he said that it would be okay if one day I decided I liked boys too, and it would be okay if I didn’t. That he loved me no matter what—” Theo’s voice cracks. I don’t look over, keep my eyes on the road. Wait for him. “I was really lucky. I mean, I never even had to really come out to my parents. They always knew, and it was always okay. Or not even okay, better than that. Not something that had to be evaluated at all. It just was. Like having brown hair.”
“Your dad sounds like he was really cool.”
Theo nods.
“Have you ever wished it was the other way around?” he asks me.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that it was your dad instead of your mom?”
“Honestly, all the time.”
“It would like, literally break my mom’s heart if she heard me say that, but he got me, you know? He