Sprout

asked you to start dating my dad.”
    “Really?” Mrs. Miller said, and you could tell the word had come out before she’d taken the time consider it. I remembered Ruthie’s question from the day before school started, about whether I’d intentionally played matchmaker, or whether it’d merely been unconscious (okay, she didn’t use the word “unconscious,” but it’s what she meant).
    Mrs. Miller drew a line in the air with her hand.
    “I’m not going to talk to you about my relationship with Bob. That’s a discussion for him to begin, not me. What I would like to talk about—” she tapped the paper on the counter between us “—is this.”
    Somehow I didn’t think she meant the essay. The language, I mean. “Esoterical grammatical constructions” and “nonlinear narrative progression” and all that. But once again she threw me for a loop.
    “Do you know what a clitic is?”
    “No, but it sounds dirty.”
    “A clitic,” Mrs. M. said, tapping my essay again, “is a particular form of a word that doesn’t have any real meaning until it attaches to another word. The simplest example is the contraction. The apostrophe-M in I’m , or the double-L in I’ll . Or that little e in email . A clitic has lost its ability to be independent, can only exist when another, stronger word comes along to prop it up.”
    “Um?” I said, cuz, like, what else was I going to say? “I liked it better when I thought it was dirty.” But as I stared cluelessly at her finger tapping my essay, I noticed that it was covering and uncovering the word “Ty,” and one of those lightbulbs went on in my brain. Well, it didn’t go on as much as flicker a bit, but I thought I sort of understood what she was trying to tell me.
    “You’re saying Ty is a …” The lightbulb flickered out. “Contraction?”
    “ Clitic ,” she said. “Good lord, Sprout, you work some complicated metaphors. Give me one of my own.”
    “You—think—Ty—” the words dropped out of my mouth one at a time, as I tried to figure out what she was saying “—is—dependent—on— me ?”
    “Think about it. A twin who lost his brother. A boy with no mother, no friends, no future. It makes sense that he’d latch onto anyone who’d let him.”
    “You’re saying—” I gulped, struggling to keep my voice level “—you’re saying Ty’s friendship with me isn’t real ? That I’m just, I dunno, handy ? A prop or something?”
    Mrs. Miller shook her head rapidly, her long blonde unhair-sprayed locks swishing back and forth like a Clairol commercial. “It’s real , Sprout. Of course it’s real. I’m just not sure it’s what you think it is. What you hope it is.” I started to say something, but she waved me silent. “Look, it’s not Ty I’m concerned about here. It’s you.”
    “Why? I thought he was the clitic. The apostrophe-M. I’m just the good old noun.”
    “Pronoun.” Mrs. Miller allowed herself a grin. Then: “It takes two to tango, Sprout. Or, in your case, to wrestle, fall out of trees, and dig holes in the ground. Since you’ve met him, your one stable friendship has fallen apart, you’ve been kicked off the cross-country team, and you’re on academic probation.”
    “Don’t forget that I’ve started shooting heroin and dismembering small animals.”
    “This is serious, Sprout.”
    “The only reason I did well in school was because I had nothing better to do. I’m as smart or as stupid as I ever was. I’m just not regurgitating it on some test.”
    “Well, what about writing? Don’t tell me that was just a way to fill up time. You were too good at it not to care.”
    “I’m still good at it!” I tapped the essay on the counter. “Don’t tell me this isn’t good, cuz I know it is.”
    “Sprout—” Mrs. Miller’s voice fell. Up till then she’d sounded stern yet pleading. Now she just sounded defeated. “Of course it’s good . It’s great. But—you know you can’t write about this.”
    “About what? Ty?”
    “Not Ty. Not exactly. About—”
    “What? About being gay ?”
    Mrs. Miller shrugged helplessly. “You know the state you live in, Sprout. If you turn in an essay like this, an essay about this, the judges aren’t going to see your inventiveness, your humor, your compassion. They’re just going to see your sexuality. And they’re not going to like it.”
    “And that’s a good reason not to write about it? Because some bigot in Topeka will be offended?”
    “No.