Chapter Ten
“I had great plans for the Killer Numbats,” Mark said at the library the next day. “Great plans.”
“Mmm.” Brandon read the same passage of his economics textbook. Again. The words were still English, and they still didn’t make any sense.
“It would be like…” Mark swung back in his chair. “Like in Rocky, where there’s the whole of the training montage—”
“‘Eye of the Tiger.’”
“Exactly! First it’s all dun, dun dun DUN, and then what happens? It’d be like Rocky turned up at the fight all pumped up to win, and Mr. T didn’t bother to show.” Mark chewed on the end of his pen. “Ugh. I could kill Deke.”
“You don’t mean that.” Brandon was pretty sure Mark didn’t mean at least 90 percent of what he said.
“No.” Mark sighed. “I don’t mean that. I mean, we’re still going to do this thing, but who’s our nemesis now? The Tea Party?”
“Club.”
“Or the water polo team?”
“I hear they play dirty.”
“No, Bran,” Mark said. “I can’t have a bunch of guys in funny hats and budgie smugglers as my nemesises.” He frowned. “Nemesi? Nemeses?”
“Nemeses,” Brandon agreed. He stared at his textbook again for a while, before a movement over in the stacks distracted him. He thought he’d seen Alex. For the last eighteen hours, he’d been imagining he saw Alex everywhere. These imagined glimpses filled him with so much hope, and yet the knowledge that he was going to have a very real encounter with Alex later at Academic Challenge practice terrified him.
Why?
It’s Alex.
Alex who fell off the bed when I tried to…
“You’ll have me as a nemesis now,” Brandon pointed out.
“Yeah, but no offense, that’s like if Mr. T sent his slightly malnourished friend to fight in his stead.”
“Excuse me?” Brandon looked up.
“No! I mean, brainwise, you’re probably a more formidable opponent than Deke. But I have no desire to destroy you. You’re nice and stuff.”
“And Deke isn’t?”
“He is, but he’s such a wanker.” Mark shook his head. “God, I love him.”
Brandon tried to figure out how that worked. He knew his mom and dad sometimes drove each other crazy, but it didn’t mean they didn’t love each other. So falling in love had to be some kind of magic thing that made all the bad stuff about someone seem awesome. Which, he supposed, was kind of like friendship. Mark leaned forward, pen hanging out of his mouth, to read some graffiti on the table. Brandon saw the lace waistband of his underwear. He opened his mouth to tell Mark to sit back down, hitch his pants up, that everyone could see.
But Mark didn’t care. In fact, he was very likely doing this on purpose. Brandon didn’t get it. Mark was openly gay, wore lacy underwear, paid lip service to a communications major, and he still seemed like more of a man than Brandon, who wore neutral-toned boxers and studied economics and had passed as straight his whole fucking life.
Mr. Fenimore knew. So it’s not like you passed.
Kay would have told him no, that what had happened had nothing to do with Brandon being gay or straight or tall or short or blond or anything at all on Brandon’s end. And why the hell did being gay or wearing lacy underwear determine someone’s masculinity?
Because that was what Brandon’s father thought. And Brandon had been so happy being his dad’s pal, his conspirator, his only son, that he’d blindly believed everything his dad told him. He knew Mark had only been teasing with his comment about Brandon not being satisfying competition—not because he wasn’t smart, but because he wasn’t strong. But it still hurt.
And how could the way Brandon presented himself not have had something to do with why Mr. Fenimore chose him? Mr. Fenimore had said he was a good kid. If Brandon had spent less time trying to be a perfect student, maybe Mr. Fenimore wouldn’t have noticed him. If Brandon had been totally, 100 percent straight, maybe what Mr. Fenimore had done wouldn’t have felt good to Brandon, and Mr. Fenimore would have stopped doing it.
If you hadn’t worn Scooby Doo underwear until you were twelve. If you hadn’t been such a fucking baby, so desperate to please, such an easy target.
Same reason Bengal had taken him down to the Alpha Delt basement last year. Mark would have fought. Brandon just took it.
“‘Jo-ie Lawrensh ish fine.’” Mark read the graffiti through his teeth, spitting the pen out as he finished. “Is anyone named Jodie anymore? I feel like this was written in the 80s. Can we do one of those authentification things like they do with paintings, where they figure out how old it is by what the paint was made of?” He sat back.
“Sorry I took Deke’s place.”
“No, no. This isn’t about you. He’s the one who quit. Because of this whole interfraternity council thing.” Mark drummed the table and gazed at the stacks. “It’s like…he can never just be happy being smart and awesome and good with people and hot as fuck in bed. He just has to keep doing more things.” He sounded genuinely discouraged.
“It’ll be all right.” Brandon wasn’t sure what else to say. “It’s not like he’ll stop having time for you or anything.”
Mark slumped. “I’m not worried about that. I just, you know. Never do anything.”
“You started the Killer Numbats. This is the first time since, like, 1981 Alpha Delt’s participating in the Academic Challenge.”
“Yeah. I kinda hoped Deke would be psyched about me trying to take more of an interest in thoughts and learning and whatever. Instead he laughs at me and then quits his team because, you know, he’s got a zillion other things he’s excelling at, so this one’s rubbish.”
“He wasn’t laughing at you.” Brandon knew Mark’s feelings had been more hurt than he’d let on by Deacon’s reaction to the Killer Numbats. But he also knew Deacon would never intentionally hurt Mark. “I thought you guys were cool about that.”
“We are,” Mark said quickly. “Don’t listen to me. I’m just being a douchebag.”
Brandon tried again to read the paragraph in his book. But he could feel Mark fidgeting beside him. So he shut the book and faced Mark. “It’s okay to want people to know that you’re smart.”
“I’m not smart.”
“Bullshit.”
Mark scratched the table. “How’s your stalker?”
“Nice subject change.”
“Thanks.”
Brandon hesitated. Why the hell not tell Mark? Mark was his friend, and at the very least, Mark wouldn’t think he was a freak.
Because things aren’t going to last with Alex. Do you really want to have to explain why?
But with Mark, Brandon wouldn’t have to explain. When everything went to shit between Brandon and Alex, Mark would know the reason. Would probably have figured it was just a matter of time.
No. He didn’t want to think that way. He wanted to believe he had a chance with Alex. And he wanted to tell somebody. Somebody who wasn’t Kay.
“I think I like him.”
“You think?” Mark paused. “Wait…you think you like him?”
A longer silence. Too long.
“Bran,” Mark said warningly.
“Did you always know you were gay?” Brandon blurted.
Mark tilted his head. “Pretty much. There was one time when I was five I thought I might have a crush on a girl, but it turned out I was just using her to get close to her SpongeBob lunch box.”
“So if I didn’t know up till now, is that weird?”
“Dunno. Why would it be weird? I didn’t know I liked spinach until last year.”
Brandon closed his eyes for a moment. He’d never planned to have this conversation in a library. He’d never planned to have it at all. “I, uh, think I might be—I might…I do…like…guys. Sometimes.” So that had gone eloquently.
Mark slapped the table. “That. Is. Awesome.”
Brandon wished he saw it that way.
“So your hipster stalker doesn’t just have a crush on you,” Mark said. “You think he’s hot too? Because he is. For a nerd.”
“I like him,” Brandon repeated.
“So wait, have you been…?” Mark narrowed his eyes. “Where were you really yesterday when I wanted to kill zombies and try Pop-Tarts?”
“At an Academic Challenge meeting.” Brandon knew he sounded defensive. “And…then with Alex.”
Mark whooped.
“Please stop.”
“So what happened?”
“Made out with him,” Brandon mumbled.
“Holy shit.”
“Shh! It didn’t go well. His, uh, roommate caught us. And then he fell out of bed.”
“Hipstalker did?”
“Yeah.” Brandon made a face, remembering his scramble down the ladder to get to Alex. He’d apologized a zillion times, and Alex had assured him, groaning, that he wasn’t hurt, that he’d landed mostly on a pile of Evan’s dirty laundry, and that he had always been klutzy. But it had put an end to their night together.
Mark grinned. “Brandon Mills. Welcome to the club.”
“The club?”
Mark pointed beyond the stacks, at the microfiche room. “Deke and I did it in there. Also once in an alley. And in the Kissin’ Shack at the Alpha Delt Party.”
“Um, TMI.” Brandon stared at the microfiche room in horror. “So you got caught? Or one of you fell seven feet onto a tile floor?”
“No, we never got caught or fell. So really, my story’s nothing like yours. But mate, getting caught fooling around in a dorm room is, like, a rite of passage. Good on you. And falling’s always hilarious. Unless…did you push him out of bed because you weren’t into it?”
“No! God, no.”
“I’m just saying, it’s all right if you did. One time Deke was nagging me about how I only had thirty-two points out of a possible one hundred and forty in my geology class, so I sort of moved the chair he was about to sit on, and he fell on his arse. To this day I’m not sure if I did it consciously or not. It was very A Separate Peace.”
“You’ve read A Separate Peace?”
“Deke made me. He said it contained a lot of interesting ideas. I agree.”
Brandon shook his head. “You’re supposed to read it as a work of fiction, not a training manual.”
“Ah, well.” Mark laced his hands behind his head and stretched. “You say sidewalk, I say footpath. Let’s call the whole thing off.” Another moment and his face grew serious. “I don’t want to be all, you know, but… Were you okay? I mean, not with the falling or getting caught or whatever. But with the doing stuff?”
Brandon smiled. “Yeah. Mostly.”
“Good.” Mark was silent a while, scratching the table and tilting his chair back precariously. “Jesus, Bran. That’s really, really good.”
It was good. Wasn’t it?
“And if he ever, like, doesn’t treat you right or something,” Mark went on, “I will find where he lives and I will shove the Magna Carta so far up his arse that he’ll have the protected liberties of feudal barons coming out his nose.”
“What are you talking about? The Magna Carta?”
“The Killer Numbats were studying it last night. It has a lot of words. But we kind of get it now.”
Brandon laughed. “Mark? Good for you too. Yeah?”
Mark shrugged. “Whatever.” But he looked pleased.
* * * *
Alex winced as he took his seat at the drag show committee meeting.
“What’s wrong, dude?” Blake asked.
“I, uh, hurt my back. Falling. I fell. And hurt my back. A little. I’m okay. Just gotta…walk it off.”
“That’s what I always say, man. Like when people say football’s too dangerous—all the brain injuries and concussions and stuff. I tell ’em, you get up, you walk it off, and you’re fine. I mean, look at me.” He went to talk to Scoops.
Alex actually was okay. More than okay. He was ecstatic. Sure, he wished he hadn’t fallen off the bed. But he’d kissed Brandon Mills. And Brandon had been a willing participant this time. And they’d see each other at Academic Challenge practice later, and then tonight they were going to the dining hall together, and Alex was going to use one of his meal swipes to get Brandon in, since Brandon didn’t have a meal plan anymore since joining Phi Sig.
It was like a real date, almost. It was the closest thing to a real date Alex had been on anyway, and he couldn’t imagine that looking forward to a dinner at a fine restaurant and dancing and a walk on the beach or whatever could feel any more awesome.
He and Hannah worked with a girl named Denny to learn how to operate the soundboard. Blake was in a group with Scoops, Gretel, and Stasia—Alex wasn’t sure what they were doing; he just knew Hannah kept looking over at the group. “It’s pretty crazy Blake’s on the team,” she said finally.
“Yeah, I guess you don’t get many football players volunteering for this,” Alex said.
“Well.” Hannah tilted her head, watching Blake high-five Stasia. “A lot of the questions are about sports. And we didn’t have anyone else who was good at that. Except Kate, but she bombed the geography part.”
Alex wasn’t sure what Hannah meant. But he let it go and made a note about the soundboard sliders in his notebook.
“So are you nervous about facing us?” Hannah asked. “I mean, you’re on the Phi Sig team, right?”
“Yeah. I mean, no, I’m not nerv— Wait. What are we talking about?”
“The GSA Academic Challenge team. Stasia, Gretel, me, Scoops. And Blake’s our alternate.”
Alex opened his mouth. Turned to look across the room, where Blake had rolled up the informational sheet and was using it as a telescope. “Uh…you mean that Blake?”
“I know,” Hannah said. “But like I said, he knew all the sports questions at tryouts. And unlike Kate, he’s not half bad at geography.”
* * * *
Academic Challenge practice didn’t go well. Tony and Matt were in a lousy mood over the schedule, and the tension was getting to Alex before practice even started.
“There are more teams than ever before,” Matt said. “Which means every team has to do two matches a week this year in order to get eliminations done in enough time for the regionals.”
“Suddenly GSA has a team,” Tony added. “And Alpha Delt. And the Spanish Students Society. Jesus.”
Alex wondered if they’d heard about Blake.
“Two a week doesn’t sound bad,” Reuben said.
“Yeah, but we all have classes.” Tony fiddled with one of the buzzers. “And lives.”
“You’re just worried it’ll cut into Risk night,” Deacon teased. He was seated on the couch, note cards in hand. He was supposed to serve as moderator, assuming this practice ever got off the ground.
“Easy for you to joke about it,” Tony snapped. “You jumped ship.”
“Tony, fuck off,” Matt said. “He’s kidding.”
“Well, I’m just saying. This is our chance to get revenge on Bucknell for beating us last year. Except now we might not even make it through, because the Tea Club apparently has some girl who interned at the White House and knows the answer to every political question ever. And there’s a rumor the GSA has a freaking sports expert!”
Alex swallowed.
Then there was a heated debate over the team name. Alex stayed out of it until Tony and Matt finally settled on Alderaan Duran.
Finally practice got underway, but it was uninspiring. Tony flubbed an easy movie question. Reuben buzzed in but couldn’t come up with Judit Polgar’s name. “I thought you were a chess prodigy!” Matt yelled.
“I play chess!” Reuben shot back. “That doesn’t mean I know everyone who’s ever played it since the beginning of time.”
And then there was Brandon.
Brandon couldn’t seem to buzz in first to save his life. And when he did, his answers were usually wrong. At first, Alex thought he must be nervous. But the more he watched Brandon, the more Brandon didn’t seem nervous at all. The few times he did buzz in to answer, his gaze cut briefly to Alex before he spoke. And when he wasn’t answering questions, Alex could feel him staring.
Holy shit. Unless Alex was giving himself way too much credit, Brandon couldn’t concentrate because he was busy thinking about Alex.
The thought flustered him, and pretty soon he couldn’t answer questions either.
And then, from one house over, the intro to “Eye of the Tiger” began to blare.
Deacon, Matt, and Tony all rolled their eyes in unison. Brandon leaned toward Alex and Reuben. “This happens all the time,” he whispered. “Day or night. They’re trying to psych us out.”
“I’m gonna go say something.” Matt rose.
“No!” Tony stood halfway too, as if to stop him. “We can’t let them know they’re getting to us. Just stay here. Someone will complain to campus security eventually.”
They all sat tense as the music blared. Outside, there was a splash. A voice that sounded suspiciously Aussie barked, “Jackson, you have to get on the bull same as everyone else!”
“Oh, God.” Deacon got up and headed for the back door.
Alex followed Deacon and the others outside.
Over in the Alpha Delta backyard, a brown-and-white and disturbingly realistic-looking mechanical bull was parked by the swimming pool, facing the water and surrounded on the other three sides by a thick blue mat. It was rocking slowly back and forth, its saddle empty. In the pool, one of the Killer Numbats—a Sean?—was paddling toward the ladder, fully clothed. The other Numbats were lined up behind the bull. Mark stood before them with note cards.
“Russell, you’re up,” he called over the music.
Alex watched as Russell mounted the bull.
“Oh no,” Deacon whispered. “Please, no.”
“What’s the capital of New Hampshire?” Mark read from the note card.
“Uh…Montpelier?” Russell tried.
“Wrong!” Mark jabbed a button on the control panel, and the bull started bucking harder. Russell gripped the rigging with one hand and tried to balance. Sean, meanwhile, had climbed out of the pool and taken his place, dripping, at the back of the line. “Who was the first to stab Caesar?”
“Casca?” Russell answered.
“Well done. Who becomes president if both the president and vice president are killed?”
“Uh…the…majority…something?”
Mark pressed the button again, and the bull bucked so fast Russell had to hold on with both hands to avoid pitching forward into the water.
“Jesus, Mark, what are you doing?” Deacon demanded, stepping into the yard.
“Oh, hey, Deke. This is part of our new training program.”
Russell clung to the bull’s thick neck.
“Someone’s going to get killed.”
“Oh, please, there’s a safety mat.” Mark reached over to the speakers and turned the music down. “We decided we need to get serious about training, since now we have to crush your men and our Judas as well.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Blake joined the GSA team.”
“Are you…?”
“Kidding? No. And I know Blake. He might not be the brightest firework in the show, but he has a surprising command of geography. Speaking of which.” He glanced at the note card, then up at the desperate Russell. “What continent is Iraq on?”
“M-middle East!” Russell answered.
Mark shook his head and pressed the button, and the bull went faster. Russell shouted in terror.
“Mark, stop,” Deacon said. “This competition is not worth someone’s head getting split open. Turn that bull off.”
“Actually.” Jackson stepped forward. “We’re managing just fine without your input.”
Sean shivered, arms crossed over his soaked T-shirt. “Y-yeah. W-we’re gonna w-win this thing.”
“Sorry, Deke,” Mark said casually. “Just because you gave up on your team doesn’t mean you get to be captain of mine.” He reached over and hit the button. The bull slowed, then abruptly stopped. Russell sat there for a moment, dazed, then slowly slid off onto the mat. “Good job, Russell. Next?”
Deacon turned to the Phi Sigs. “I can’t reason with him. You know I can’t.”
Tony kicked a patch of clover. “Let’s just call it quits for the day.” He turned and started back toward Phi Sig.
“We might as well call it quits for the season,” Matt muttered. “This competition is turning into a sideshow.”
Alex glanced at Brandon, who had watched the whole exchange without appearing to process it. “Hey,” he whispered. Brandon whipped around to look at him. “You want to get an early dinner?”
Brandon smiled, making Alex’s stomach pitch up and down like the bull. “Okay.”
They were almost out of the yard when Mark ran over. “Hey,” he called. “Wait.” Alex and Brandon stopped. “You two going somewhere?”
He stared at Alex.
“Uh, g-going to dinner.” Alex refused to step back, even though Mark was uncomfortably close.
Mark nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He slung an arm around Brandon’s shoulders but continued to stare at Alex. “You listen to me—Alex, is it?”
“Yeah.” Alex willed himself not to be intimidated.
“You know who you have here?” Mark tilted his head toward Brandon. “Brandon Mills is amazing. All right? The absolute cream of the bloody crop. So whatever you do with him, you treat him like the King of goddamn France. Yeah?”
“Oh. My. God.” Brandon twisted out of Mark’s grasp. “Would you stop?”
“What? Your dad’s not here to threaten him with a shotgun. So I had to do something.”
“France hasn’t had a king in over two centuries,” Alex said defiantly. He suddenly resented how confident Mark was, how good-looking, and how close he and Brandon obviously were.
Mark glanced at him coolly. “I know. They have a president and a prime minister. Thanks, Wikipedia. My point is, if you ever do anything to hurt Bran—”
“Okay, okay, we’re leaving,” Brandon said, grabbing Alex’s arm and hurrying away.
“Make good choices!” Mark called cheerfully. As Alex glanced over his shoulder, he saw Mark walking back toward the mechanical bull and the Numbats.