Ask the Passengers

“Astrid?” he says.

“Yeah?”

“You want to go out sometime? I mean, nothing big deal or anything, but you know—just you and me?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, yeah, sure, maybe. I’m pretty busy at the moment, but I guess I’d like that.” I have no idea why I said that. I do not want to go out with Jeff. Not because of the leg thing, but because I’m—uh—taken already.

“No pressure,” he says. “You can get back to me about it.”

“Sure. I’ll get back to you,” I say.

And hour later, all is right with the world—the football captain and cheer squad co-captain are crowned Homecoming king and queen. The cars drive the losers and winners out of the stadium while we applaud their collective greatness, and then we’re all sent back into school before final bell.

Kristina calls me at seven because she already heard Jeff asked me out.

They say: Why would she snub a nice boy like Jeff Garnet? It’s not like she has other options.

They say: She’s just like her mother. Thinks she’s better than us.

“Why didn’t you say yes?” she says. “You do want to get Claire off your case about dating, right?”

“I didn’t not say yes. I said I’d get back to him. That I was—uh—busy for a while.”

“Oh, sure. All that Plato and Aristotle.”

“Seriously, Kristina. He’s not my type.”

“You really should hook up with someone this year, Astrid. It’s depressing. Plus, I feel guilty. You spend so much time with me and Justin, I feel like it’s our fault.”

“How’s it your fault?” I ask.

“How can you date anyone if you’re so busy keeping our secrets?”

She has a point. Except she’s missing the biggest piece of information in the equation. My secret is bigger than her secret, because nobody knows it yet.

Not even me.

At dinner, the subject comes up again. Me and Jeff Garnet—talk of the town.

“I don’t know,” I say when Ellis asks me if I’m going to say yes.

“I hear he’s a really sweet boy,” Mom says. “I hear he’s at the top of your class, too. Do you two share some classes?”

“Just lit class. And lunch,” I say.

Ellis says, “You know, if you don’t start dating again, people will think you’re still not over Huber. Or they’ll probably say you’re g*y.”

I smile at her and give her death-ray eyes. And anyway, I already had my g*y rumor. Tenth grade, December. Right before Christmas vacation.

I think if we kept a calendar of who gets called g*y in high school, there would be a new person on every single day of the 180-day school year. Gay, dyke, fag, lesbo, homo, whatever. Every single one of us has heard it somewhere along the ride. It’s more common than the flu. More contagious, too. Nobody gossips about whether you have the flu or not.

Then, as if on cue, Claire blurts out, “That reminds me. I was at the printer today, and Luanne said that there are only lesbians on the school hockey team, which I took to be an ignorant attempt to insult Ellis. What decade are these people living in? I mean, that might have been true back when I was in school, but in the twenty-first century, all kinds of girls play sports. Why do these small-town people have to have such small minds?”

Ellis looks at Mom as if she’s reading from the wrong script.

“I knew plenty of girls who played sports when we went to school who weren’t lesbians, Claire,” Dad says. “My sister, for one. Hell, my mother played sports in the fifties. Last time I checked, she wasn’t a lesbian, either.”

“Well, it’s no big deal to us, girls. Your father and I lived in New York for a long time. We knew plenty of g*y people.” That’s Mom. Friend of the Gays. FOTG. Wait. Her FOTG badge is around here somewhere. Let me find it. “I just don’t understand why people here talk about it like it’s leprosy,” she says. “I hope you’re nice to them, Ellis.”

Ellis gives her an insulted look. “Of course I am! Geez, Mom. Stop being so weird.”

“Some people around here think you can catch it, you know.”

All three of us look at her as if she has just landed from space.

“Well, they do!” she insists. “I’ve heard them say you can catch g*y off g*ys. Isn’t that ignorant?”

We keep looking at her. She drinks more wine.

I’m happy to see that Ellis is as annoyed as I am, but I’m working really hard not to get paranoid about why Ellis said anything about people thinking I’m g*y in the first place.

I look at her. “So you’d rather have me dating Tim Huber again than happily single?”

“God!” she says. “No!” Then she chews and swallows. “Anyway, he doesn’t talk to you anymore, does he?”

No. Tim Huber doesn’t talk to me anymore. Not since I completely fell for him and Ellis and Mom started bugging me to break up with him because he’s fat. Then, when I wouldn’t, somebody (most likely the somebody to my right, or to her right) started the rumor that broke us up.

They said: She’s only dating him because he’s fat.

They said: It’s a pity thing.

“No,” I answer. “He doesn’t talk to me.”

“But Jeff Garnet is a nice kid,” Ellis says.

“I know. Look. Why can’t you all just butt out of my life?”

Claire holds up her wineglass. “If we butted out of your life, you’d still be in diapers. And dating that fat boy.”

I DO NOT LIKE THE PLAN.

“YOU’RE GOING TO CALL JEFF, and you’re going to get him to cover for you,” Kristina says.

“Were you talking to my mom?”

“No, why?” she asks. She’s not lying. I can tell when she lies, and she’s genuinely clueless about the rally cry at dinner last night about how badly I need a boyfriend.

We’re in my room, and until she started talking, I was completely blissed out after a morning at work with Dee where we worked side by side and spent the entire time pretending to talk in our own language of clicks and weird robotic animal sounds until we cracked everyone up and I nearly peed my pants. We spent a half hour “taking inventory” in both walk-ins (fridge and freezer) for a huge job we have next week. Some big reception and open-house event for the Hispanic Center in town, the biggest job Maldonado Catering ever got.

o;Astrid?” he says.