Sprout

detention, up to and including pretending to share his answers on a history quiz, which made Mrs. Coulter laugh so hard I thought she was going to pee herself (the funny thing is, I had been copying his answers, because I’d hung out with Ty the night before and hadn’t read the assignment). And, when you find out that I’ve left out the academic warning I got in civics (you’d think after twenty-four or twenty-five constitutional amendments they’d just start over, but no , they keep adding more), it probly won’t come as a surprise that I also skipped over the fact that I got booted from the cross-country team (you’re not allowed to suit up for sports when you’re on academic probation at Buhler, and since I’d already missed like 90% of the practices Coach Greene went ahead and gave me the ax). And so anyway, after all that I doubt it’ll come as a big shocker that I haven’t bothered to allude to the truly magical hour I spent with Mrs. Miller every day in fourth period, let alone the “bonus session” on Fridays when she pulled me out of independent study to go over my writing assignment for the week. This was sixth—i.e., last—period, and Mrs. Miller generally ignored the 3:30 bell, my peers screaming their weekend plans up and down the hallway outside her door, the throaty rumble of buses as they lumbered south on Main Street with their sardine-loads of high schoolers. “I’ll just drive you home,” she always said, a big smile on her face, like she was taking me to the mall or a water park or, I don’t know, a strip club. But of course it wasn’t just me she was taking to my house: it was herself, and by the time we turned on 82nd Street I’d become little more than a passenger. I ground the back of my head into the already-green-stained headrest of her Civic while she touched up her lipstick and eye shadow and foundation or blush or whatever it is you call the makeup women put on their cheeks. She drove with one hand, the rearview and vanity mirrors angled so she could see both sides of her face at once, and every once in a while I’d scream “Cow!” or “Deer!” or “Ostrich!” just to make her jump. When we reached my house I climbed out and my dad climbed in, his hair as neatly combed as mine was messy, his shirt tucked into his belt in a way that somehow complimented Mrs. Miller’s untucked blouses. “S’a jar-a cream corn on the counter,” he’d joke as we passed each other. “Make it last till Monday.” In fact there was usually a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, and the car keys, and of course my notebook—which pretty much brings us back to where this paragraph started about two pages ago. I.e., Mrs. M., reading slowly, occasionally commenting on my “esoterical grammatical constructions” or “nonlinear narrative progression” or “over-reliance on irony as a distancing technique,” and even though she often looked at me over the tops of her glasses with that skeptical expression she’d thrown my way when she first recruited me at the end of sophomore year, she never did ask the one question that, you know, I also wanted the answer to, even more than she did. Namely:
    Was Ty gay?
    On the one hand, there was our need to be with each other as much as possible, and the more or less constant excuses we found to touch each other. On the other was the fact that Ty pretty much talked about girls nonstop (which comments I haven’t reproduced here because, first of all, the world really doesn’t need one more catalog of teenage boys talking about girls’ bodies, and, secondly, it’s the kind of stuff that would 100% definitely get this book banned from the BHS library).
    And then too there was that last thing he said. I.e.:
    “I’m not gay.”
    That seemed pretty, you know, assertive. Definitive even.
    And yet.
    And yet, he’d said it without me asking him. Said it when he was showing me his twin brother’s grave of all things, and I’d put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, which suggested Ty was thinking about the subject as much as I was—more even, since, although I admit I’m a little socially awkward, not even I am uncouth enough to make a play for someone at a moment like that. And let’s face it: Ty wouldn’t be the first gay person to deny his homosexuality: Ricky Martin, meet Doogie Howser. And so yeah but anyway (by which I mean what ever , mary): after a month and half of hanging out with him, not to mention fifty-some pages of