Absent (Katie Williams)

question or two of my own.
    “I read that Andy Warhol was gay,” I say when Mr. Fisk calls on me (for the fifth time that hour) in art class. “Was he?” This question is for Evan, but I don’t dare glance at him sitting invisibly on the cupboard behind me.
    My comment earns a few titters and a shout of “Awesome!”
    “Yes,” Mr. Fisk agrees gamely, “and in Warhol’s time, there were actually laws that made it illegal to . . .” And on he goes.
    After the bell has rung, I approach Mr. Fisk’s desk, where he stirs a soup of papers between his long fingers.
    “Thanks for telling us about Andy Warhol,” I say.
    “Certainly.” Mr. Fisk looks up. “Thanks for asking.”
    “I just thought it could be helpful for some people who might be thinking about their, you know, orientation.”
    “I agree.” Mr. Fisk leaves the papers altogether. His eyebrows draw together. Serious teacher face. I know where this is headed. “Is that something you’re worried about, Chris?”
    “No, not me. At least, I don’t think so,” I add because I don’t know the inner halls of Chris Rackham’s heart or even the topiary lining its front walk.
    “It’s all right not to be sure,” Mr. Fisk says.
    “Yeah, I know. But, really, it’s a friend who’s wondering.”
    “Ah,” Mr. Fisk says. “A friend.”
    “Not a ‘friend’ that’s me. A real friend. He exists.”
    Mr. Fisk smiles. “I wasn’t trying to imply it was you. It’s just I had a friend like that, too.” The angles of his smile have shiftedsomehow into something sad. Your mouth really should be bent the opposite way, I want to tell him. “Are you worried about your friend?” he asks.
    “I just want him to . . . be okay with himself.”
    Mr. Fisk closes his eyes, right there in the classroom. “I want that for every student.” He opens them. “Maybe you could invite him to a GSA meeting. Gay-Straight Alliance. Every other Wednesday after school.”
    “I don’t know if he’d go to that.”
    “Maybe if you came with him.”
    “Yeah, maybe. Thanks.”
    I turn, eager to see Evan’s reaction to this. But the back cupboard holds only art supplies, not, as I’d hoped, an attentive ghost. All that awkward teacher conversation, and Evan hasn’t even bothered to listen to it.
    And now for lunch, and the real reason I’ve chosen to inhabit Chris Rackham. Not only was Chris elected class president by the sheer tens of students who had bothered to fill out a ballot, but his mom is superintendent of our school district. There is no one more trustworthy at Paul Revere High. People will have to believe him when he says I fell.
    I time it for midway through lunch, the well-rounders reaching the pudding cups at the bottoms of their brown bags. There’s a lull in the conversation as butterscotch is wordlessly traded for vanilla and foils are peeled back with a snick of plastic. I wait for the silence to peak. At just the right moment, Kelsey Pope obliges me by standing up on her chair and waving one of the ponies over to her with a giddy yell.
    “Someone sure needs a lot of attention,” I make Chris say, looking meaningfully at Kelsey.
    “She’s a pleasure-seeking monster,” Whitney Puryear agrees grimly. “We used to be best friends for, like, all of middle school. Did you know that?”
    “No,” I say honestly.
    “Well, we were. She used to say,” Whitney sits up extra straight, widens her eyes, and heaves an imaginary sheath of hair over her shoulder, “ ‘Whitney, do you ever feel like you’ll love everyone, and no one will ever love you back?’ ”
    “Awww!” the well-rounders chorus faux pity in a minor key.
    “That must have been before she got breasts,” I quip, and the rounders all look at me, stunned.
    “Chris, ouch!” Whitney says.
    “Yes, people, you heard it here. Chris just said that,” another one says.
    “Just kidding,” I mumble, reminding myself to act more like Chris, less like me.
    “Well, everyone frigging loves her now anyway.” Whitney rolls her eyes.
    “Do they?” I ask. “I heard she made up this nasty rumor about—”
    “Paige Wheeler?” one of the rounders cuts in. “Yeah, a kid in calc was saying that maybe Kelsey made that up.”
    “Right. Exactly. Did anyone else hear that?” I ask, thinking of my hours of careful rumor spreading. I am awarded with noncommittal noises.
    “If you ask me, that girl totally jumped,” Whitney says.
    “Totally,” one of the others agrees. “Nancy