Sprout

hissed, doing a not-very-good imitation of my accent. “I think there are dirty little thoughts swirling around beneath all that wavy brown hair of yours, aren’t there, newbie ?”
    I could hear the meanness in Ian’s voice, but I could hear something else too. Curiosity. But not regular old garden-variety curiosity. No, this was something more. This was almost … salacious .
    Curse that dictionary.
    “Let’s see if we can find out what’s sprouting beneath that mama’s boy haircut, a’ight newbie?” Before I knew it, Ian had wrapped me in a headlock with his right arm, was using his left knuckles to give me what used to be called an Indian burn in pre-P.C. days, and what is now usually called an Indian burn, because most twelve-year-olds don’t really care if what they say is P.C. or not. I stumbled out of my chair, but because it was fastened to the stupid desk I ended up tripping and falling to my hands and knees, and this allowed Ian to straddle my waist as though we were playing piggyback, and, well, how can I phrase this so this book doesn’t get banned not just from BHS, from every high school in America?
    I felt something.
    Felt something besides Ian’s fist on the top of my head, I mean, which was burning into my scalp like a hair dryer blowing on one spot for way too long. Still, I tried to focus on that, so I wouldn’t have to focus on that other thing. The thing that I was feeling on the small of my back, about two inches above my belt—assuming my belt was still where it was supposed to be, and hadn’t slipped a few inches south. Ian too, seemed to direct all his attention on the Indian burn, as if he was afraid to pay attention to anything else that was happening, but at the same time his thighs had locked around my waist, and his hips started rocking back and forth as though I were a mechanical bull. “Yee-haw,” he called out, “ride ’em, cowboy!” which, when you get right down to it, is possibly the most embarrassing part of the entire afternoon.
    After what seemed like maybe the whole of recorded history, Ian suddenly relaxed his legs and arms and I fell to the floor. I landed on my hip, rolled over slightly, so I was facing him. The top of my head felt like it was on fire, but most of my attention was focused on that warm spot on my back, which was now cooling rapidly as it pressed against the cold, gritty, vibrating linoleum (the buffers, remember?). Ian was panting, and I was too, and when I looked up I saw that his face was every bit as red as mine felt. We stared at each other for a long time, as if waiting for someone to come and interrupt us. But no one came, which meant that we had to decide what to do on our own.
    In the end gravity did the work. You’ve probly noticed by now that I have a hard time looking at one thing for a very long time, but have to keep shifting my focus from place to place. This was especially true of Ian’s eyes, which were not so much asking me a question as just … asking. After a lifetime of silent pleading, my eyes finally fell away from his. Fell to his nose first, the nostrils flared and white-edged, and then to his mouth, slack and sucking in air, and then to his chin, his corded throat, the slanting lines of his collarbones coming together at the top of the hard, sweaty seam that ran all the way down his chest and stomach to his belt buckle, which had two words written on it: “Dodge” and “Ram.”
    What can I say? I chose the latter.
    At some point I felt something soft encircle my head. At first I thought it was Ian’s hands, and can I tell you something? That’s when I knew I was gay. Because I wanted it to be Ian’s hands. Wanted to feel the hands of the handsomest boy in school running through my light brown hair even as I labored at something that both of us knew the name of, but had never connected with real life. But then I realized that Ian had just slipped his cap on me, and even as the brim cast its shadow across my closed eyes (and nose, and cheeks, and mouth) I knew he’d put it on my head so that he wouldn’t have to look at what we were doing either.
    Then, later, when all I really wanted to do was disappear:
    “How’re you getting home?”
    “I guess my dad’ll pick me up.”
    “Jew call him?”
    “Um … ?” It took me a moment to realize he’d said, D’you call him? “We don’t have a phone.”
    So his mom gave me a lift, the ten-minute drive filled with her constant patter about how was I