01
RYAN
The dream of being a school counselor is that you feel, with every precious, spirited young teen who passes through your door, you get a chance to save the world.
Then reality sets in: “Suck my dick.”
I lean over the desk and lift an eyebrow. “Frederick. You can’t talk to me like that.”
“I thought I could say whatever I want here. That this is a safe place. Didn’t you say that? Or are you a liar like everyone else?”
He’s got a lip on him, this one. “I’m here for you. No one else.”
“Yeah, for me and five hundred other numbers at this school,” he grumbles, shaking his buzzed head. Just like the last two times he’s been sent to my office for his behavior, I turn a deaf ear to his language. Through all the punk attitude, there’s a brilliant and creative mind that used to be at the top of all his classes.
And besides, he’s not wrong. The counselor-to-student ratio is a shocking four hundred and sixty-three to one. Let that sink in.
“I’m not here to discipline you,” I remind him, “or make you do parabolas or run laps. I’m your friend, Frederick.”
“Real friends let me do what I want. They don’t make me sit in their musky office and talk about boring shit.” He folds his arms and slouches in his chair, smirking.
I give the air a sniff. “I thought I got rid of the odor.”
“Smells like my grandpa’s nutsack.”
I consider him for a second. “You know, maybe a ‘real friend’ knows what’s best for you and would try to help you no matter what,” I kindly suggest, “and it doesn’t always involve something pleasant. I’m concerned about your grades.”
“I’m concerned about your face.”
Watch me save the world. Watch me grip my desk tightly and, with every ounce of patience I have left today, save this damned world. “You did really well last year. Your teachers had only good stuff to say. Ms. Thomas wrote that you were her most promising student. That’s really great, Frederick!”
He rolls his eyes and looks off, annoyed.
I sit on the edge of my desk. In an instant, I’m that thinks-he’s-the-cool-new-school-counselor cliché who pretends that he’s totally not twenty-five years old. I’m trying to act like I’m on the same level as the teenager—who bleeds with attitude in front of me. “Can you tell me what’s different this year? Remember that everything you say stays between us.”
“You’re new here.”
I blink. “That I am.”
“Different counselor last year. She was older. You don’t know what it’s like at this school. How toxic it is, this fucking place.”
Again. Deaf ear. “I do, actually. I went to this school. And not too long ago, I might add.”
He scowls at me, then looks away, over it.
I’m still reaching. “Tell me what’s going on. Did something happen on the soccer team?”
“I’m not on the soccer team anymore.”
“Oh? Since when?”
“Since yesterday.”
His attitude and the cockiness in his eyes reminds me way too much of a certain someone I used to know. I pat his folder that sits on my desk. “I … didn’t know you played piano,” I note, changing the subject and offering a little smile. “Ms. Thomas mentioned it in your file. You still play?”
Frederick looks up at me, dead-eyed. “Is this when we have a heart-to-heart and you finally reach me through some mutual love for music? Should I start opening up, shed tears, and show you on the doll where my uncle touched me?”
I choke on my own air and gape. The balls on this kid … “That’s a very serious thing you’re making light of,” I warn him.
“Everything is a ‘serious thing’. All I did was jokingly call one of my teammates a homo, and then the coach got involved, so I called him a cocksucker. I guess that’s frowned upon or something. So instead of kicking my ass—which is exactly what Coach Keys looked like he wanted to do—I was given a week of detention, suspended from the team, and sent to talk to your boring ass.”
I swallow hard and steel myself. It’s the end of the day, but I owe this kid as much energy as I gave the first one this morning. I hear words like “homo” and “fag” slung down the hallways every day from mouths I never seem to spot, but rarely do I get the chance to directly respond.
“What made you call your teammate that? Did he provoke you somehow?”
“He was being a little bitch, that’s what.”
“Did something upset you before practice?” I know something else is going on here. Maybe it’s at home. Maybe it’s in his own mind. Maybe it’s with his friends. “Lashing out at your teammates isn’t you, Frederick.”
“How would you possibly know what’s me?” he counters.
“Well, those weren’t very nice words to say to your teammate and your coach in a derogatory manner,” I point out. “You know better than that, so I’m left to wonder what got you riled up prior to practice. Do you know what it means when you call someone a ‘homo’? Or a ‘cocksucker’?”
“I’m not five years old,” he retorts. “I know what those words mean.”
“And how do you think—”
“Look, I got no problem with gay people,” Frederick spits out suddenly, spreading his hands. “They’re fucking great. Whatever. They’ll probably plan my wedding someday or teach my kid math in the fifth grade. I don’t give a crap. I just wanted to shut up my know-it-all teammate and then shut up my coach … and I just said the first stupid thing that came to mind.”
His answer transports me. Then, I find myself nodding slowly, knowingly, and look off toward the window. “I know exactly what that’s like … surprisingly.”
The moment hits me so hard, I can literally hear my own voice shouting the words in that boy’s bathroom long ago. “Shut up, faggot!” The little exclamation that started it all. And the look on Stefan Baker’s face … What a funny little irony of life, that the kid shouting the words turns out to be the gay one. It wasn’t until I was seventeen that the words ever slipped from my trembling lips: “Mom, I’m gay.” She burst into tears, blubbered on about how unsafe and cruel the world is, and then we went and got hot fudge sundaes down the street.
Hot fudge sundaes with rainbow sprinkles.
It was the gayest day of my life.
Fast-forward eight years later, and now I’m what I always wanted to be: a high school counselor with one attitude-filled unappreciative teenager after another sitting in that same chair where Frederick is right now, arms folded and lips pouting.
It’s my first year. Barely one month has gone by. And all I do is endure teenage attitude and paperwork every day while gently convincing these kids that I’m not the bad guy. Is this what I have to look forward to? Rolling eyes and tightened smiles?
Really, I’m the best damned person they can talk to at this school. It isn’t my job to discipline, to tattle, or even to scold. I’m a safe haven. All I do is counsel them and somehow marry the best interests of the parents, the school, and—most importantly—the student. Those interests don’t always align.
I take a deep breath, then turn back to Frederick importantly. “Did … your uncle really …?”
He rolls his eyes. “No.”
“You know I have to take those kinds of things seriously. Even if you said it as a joke, I still have to—”
“I don’t even have an uncle.”
I consider him for a moment. “Do you think there might have been a better way to handle yourself in front of your coach and teammate?”
Just then, the bell rings, interrupting whatever progress we had made. Frederick rises from his chair, swings his backpack over a shoulder, then heads for the door.
“Frederick.”
He stops at the door, sighs demonstratively, then speaks to me without even turning around. “What, Mr. Caulfield?”
“We’re not finished.”
“I have to catch the bus.”
“You have a future, too,” I tell him. “A bright future. A future that you can’t enjoy if you don’t get your grades—”
“We both know damned well that I can become a billionaire with or without the stupid grades,” he spits back. “Bill Gates didn’t even graduate high school.”
“College,” I correct him. “Harvard. And he still completed two years of it.”
He barely hears half of my sentence before the door shuts behind him, cutting off my words and leaving me in a vacuum of my own musky office as the murmur of excited, chatty teenagers echoes outside the door.
I bite my lip and collapse against my desk, exhausted. Am I really cut out to be a school counselor?
A dream job certainly feels a lot different when you’re paid in nothing but reality checks.
All I know is that I’ve dreamed for years to be right here where I am now. Really, I just always wanted to help kids find their way. I was fortunate enough to have that special brand of help when I was young and confused. Through high school, I had nowhere to put my feelings. I really thought all boys “looked” at other boys in gym class. I thought that’s why athletes looked in the mirrors at the gyms while working out, or why they swatted each other’s asses after a game.
Seriously. I actually thought that. I didn’t realize not all of them were “excited” by it in the same way that I was.
Oops.
All it took was one really encouraging, positive interaction with a school counselor—her name was Becky Lemont—to protect me from the chaos that had spawned inside my head the first time I even let myself think the word: gay. Becky Lemont doesn’t work here anymore, I was sad to learn when I was hired, as she moved to Minnesota with her husband. Thanks to her, by the time I graduated, I was totally secure in my feelings, understood what they meant, and didn’t have to fear them entering college.
And I know other youth are out there just like I was, and they are lost and confused … and they think they’re alone. I want to be there for them just like someone was for me.
Except maybe for Frederick. Who is totally above it all. And way too cool for school.
Sigh.
I drop by the staff break room to grab my lunch box that I’d left and run into Dana, one of the school receptionists in the front office. She gives me a beaming smile. “Thank God it’s Friday!”
I blink. “Really? It is?”
“I know! The week really flew by, didn’t it? It will be winter before you know it!” She rushes up to my side. I smell her perfume in fruity, heated waves. “You’re the new counselor, huh? How are you liking it here?”
“It’s great,” I answer.
She gives me a quick once-over while biting her lip, which doesn’t go unnoticed. Then she asks, “So you want to grab a drink with me, handsome? It’s Friday and I’m in desperate need.”
I smile. Maybe it’s a wince. I never know how to respond to women who come on to me. Assuming this is what this is, judging from the way she’s leaning into me with her boobs in my face. Really, she is any straight guy’s fantasy: gorgeous, slender, curls of dirty blonde hair, and eyelashes that go on for miles.
But alas, I’m not a straight guy, and this is not my fantasy. I never really hide who I am, but I don’t announce it either. My private life hasn’t been a topic of discussion between me and any of the other counselors or teachers here, so I doubt anyone knows I’m gay unless they just suspect it or happen to know an ex of mine. And they would have to do some serious haystack sifting to find the one or two rusty needles that are my exes to whom I don’t speak anymore.
So when single, giggly, bubbly Dana bats her eyes and asks me to go with her for a drink, can you blame me for suspecting her intentions have to do with the zucchini in my khakis?
Turns out, however, that after a day with teens like Frederick, a drink is exactly what I need right now. Maybe I have this wrong and she’s not hitting on me at all. Come to think of it, that’s rather presumptuous of me, isn’t it?
“I haven’t been to the Tin Can in quite a while,” I confess, “but I think I could totally go for a Manhattan or two.”
“Oh, we’re not going to that dump. We’re hitting Beebee’s.” She gives me a wiggle of her eyebrows. “The downtown joint.”
I don’t argue. I don’t fuss about the thirty-minute drive. I just smile at her, clutch my lunch box, and say, “See you there.”
An hour later, I’m freed from my stuffy shirt and tie and donning a loose pair of jeans with a blue polo. I burn rubber on my way to Beebee’s, desperate for that first sweet taste of alcohol. The bar is a noisy joint at the end of a long street full of other pubs and dance clubs. I find Dana at a booth in the back—where she has already ordered up chicken wings and fries—and join her.
The first question she asks is, “So tell me who you’re dating.”
Okay, it’s not a question; it’s a demand. “I’m not.”
“Whaaaat?” She cackles, all her blonde curls bouncing. “Lies,” she says, clicking her long red nails together as she chooses a fry from the basket. “I won’t believe it.”
I chuckle, still chewing my last bite of chicken wing. “Believe it. Single as a Pringle.”
“No, seriously. A guy like you?” She shakes her head. “You, my new office friend, should have enough suitors lined up to fill the gymnasium of Morris High!”
“The sad truth is, I make for a lousy date. I’m super boring.”
“Disagree.” She shoves two fries past her lips.
Dana is a very sexy woman, there’s no doubt about that. Even cramming fries into her mouth, I recognize her heart-shaped lips, her cute nose, and the catlike way her eyes taper out to the sides. She’s got curves an hourglass would envy, and a dimple that pops out every time she laughs. If I were straight, I’d turn this little meet-up into a date.
“Speak for yourself, Dana. You’re a bombshell.”
“Nope. I’m just a bomb. Pfft.” She laughs, showing me all her half-eaten fries, then throws one from the basket at me. I dodge it. “You need to open up more! You’re such a mystery. What goes on in your life when you leave the school? You got any siblings? A weird hobby? Are you a pornographer? Spill.”
“One sister,” I tell her. “She’s older. She studies rocks, lives up in Washington. She’s always had a fascination with them. I have no weird hobbies … except maybe for socks. I love socks. I have a whole drawer of them.”
“Seriously. Rocks and socks. I’m snoring over here. Answer this, Ryan: If you were a fetish pornographer, what would be your fetish?”
I’m already fighting off laughter. Dana tickles me; I can’t help it. “I don’t know. Socks, probably?”
“Socks?? Goodness, Ryan. Leave your house every now and then. Alright, I know why you’re still single now. Mystery solved.”
I hide my face in mock embarrassment. “I’m all exposed!”
“Totally.” She laughs and gives my arm a playful shove across the table. “Don’t worry. The secret of your sock fetish is safe with me. But really, how does someone as young as you land the job of a school counselor? You’re totally not a fifty-year-old woman.”
“I’m not that young. I’m twenty-five. And not all counselors are old. Marcy’s only thirty or so.”
“Twenty-five isn’t young? Ugh, shoot me. You’re a baby. Marcy’s thirty-six, by the way. And I’ve got five years on you.”
“Five??” I shake my head. “No way. You can’t be thirty.”
“In a month. Yep. I expect a birthday present now that you know.” She winks at me over her glass while coyly taking a sip of her beer.
I try on a smile. I hope nothing I’ve said can be misconstrued as flirting. I’m irrationally nervous about leading her on in any way, which I know is pretty foolish on my part. I wonder if it’s rooted in fear. Maybe I think if she finds out that I’m gay, she’ll tell everyone in the office, and then I’ll be set up on so many fugly “Oh, I know a gay guy” dates that my head will come right off. Why do I always expect the worst in people?
“So are you from around here?” she asks.
I nod. “Newmont, Texas. Born and raised. Believe it or not, I was actually a student at Morris High eight short years ago.”
She gapes at me. “No way.”
“Yep. I was even on the—”
I choke on my words as the memories rush back in like a dark, twisting storm of wind and rain and feelings that confused me back then. Maybe they still confuse me now.
Dana obviously notices my change of expression. “On … the debate team?” she attempts to finish for me.
I bring my eyes back to hers. “Baseball, actually.”
“Really? I didn’t take you for an athlete. You look more like a drama nerd to me.”
I laugh at that. “I had a girlfriend in the Theatre department.”
“Girlfriend, you say?” She nods, tapping a finger to her chin. “Interesting.”
I feel the kiss of cold sweat in my pits. “Interesting …?”
“Nothing. Anyway, I’m from Fairview. And I was totally a band geek. A slutty one, but a band geek. Seriously, musicians are some of the horniest people in the world.”
“Hey, hey, don’t slut shame yourself,” I protest. “If Bryce So-And-So on the football team can bang half the cheerleaders and be revered as a hero, then you can let any dude jump into your tuba as far as I’m concerned.”
“Trombone.” She wiggles her fingers, then lowers her head and adds in a mock sexy voice, “I like things that slide in and out.”
I bust out into laughter at that. Dana joins in, my sudden new best friend, and the pair of us can’t seem to collect ourselves for a solid minute.
Then, through the watery haze of tears in my still-laughing eyes, I turn toward a noise I hear at the bar. It’s a man who has broken into a fight with someone else. One of them—a bearded brute who looks like he eats tree trunks for breakfast—has some other unlucky guy in a headlock whose back faces me. The guy in the headlock has the perfect V-shape of a muscular body, his shoulders broad and his waist slender. His heather gray shirt pulls across the muscles of his backside and his sleeves hug a pair of bulging biceps as he fights the brute who’s two times his size.
I wipe away my tears of laughter and squint. Do I know him?
“OUT!” shouts the bartender through the noise, pointing at the door. “BOTH OF YOU! OUT!”
Other men are already trying to intervene, but the hairy giant has eaten too many logs today apparently, and his strength is unmatched. The hot guy gets thrown to the floor by the giant, then picked back up and slammed against the bar counter, only to be gorilla lifted and thrown yet again.
Goodness. I gape, horrified as mister Big Foot breaks this poor guy into pieces before our eyes.
But the guy in the gray shirt isn’t broken. Far from. He pushes off the ground at once, his face gleaming in sweat and a trickle of blood from his forehead. He staggers once to the side, growls, then launches himself right back into the brute’s stomach, tackling the enormous hairy beast to the ground.
The other customers are upon them all over again to break them up. In a matter of minutes, the hot guy is finally torn away once more from the hairy ogre, dragged kicking and cursing across the room, and is thrown out the door of the bar onto the street.
My eyes are wide open. It took just that one little glimpse of his face to recognize him.