Chapter 19
Phil and Eddie were already seated when I got to homeroom Monday morning. I had decided to skip school because I was feeling terrible. Dad agitatedly asked me why I wasn't on the bus and then told me I had exactly five minutes to get dressed and into the car. Then I had to listen to him rant and rave that he was going to be late for work because of my "lollygagging."
Phil took one look at me then glanced at Eddie. I saw him catch his breath. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that me and him weren't exactly seeing eye to eye. I don't know why Eddie had to keep bringing up Alberto's name on Sunday, but every time he did, I got madder at him for what he did on Friday night. In fact, I finally got mad enough to tell him where he could go and what he should do when he got there. How can he not get it? We're supposed to be boyfriends and he can't understand why I have a problem with him "sharin' the love," as he put it.
Phil passed me a note which read "cut class third period and meet me by the gym." I just looked over and mumbled "whatever."
Phil looked like he might have been praying when I caught up to him because his eyes were closed and it looked like he was talking to someone. Then he must have heard me or something. I'll say one thing about Phil; as laid back as he is most of the time, he doesn't beat around the bush when he really wants to know about something.
"What happened? I thought you guys were going on some getaway?"
"I don't want to talk about it. All I'm gonna say is that Eddie's one messed up guy."
Another thing I have to give Phil is that he has a way to get me to say what I was planning not to. "He met his ex at the club and decided he should join us in our room."
Phil's eyes got wide for a moment before he asked if I slept in the car.
"I wasn't gonna sleep in the car. It was like below freezing."
That answer led to another question which led to another answer and before I knew it, Phil was scarlet faced and offering to pray for me because I poured out all the details to him.
"You can save your prayers for someone else," I ruefully spat. "In case you've forgotten, I chose not to be his disciple."
"That doesn't mean he doesn't care about you, Alex. He loves you enough to give his life for you anyway."
It took a moment to recover from that. How comes he keeps telling me stuff like that even after I made it plain to him that I wasn't going to stop being who I was in order to get on God's good side. He must have realized that he played the religion card to me again and barely flinched when my fist landed on his bicep.
"He'll never stop trying to help you, even if you don't want to hear about him."
Phil grimaced before my fist landed on his bicep again.
"Great," I whined. "Now I've got to deal with someone I want who doesn't want me, and someone I don't want who won't let me alone." I ended the brief conversation by using the "F-word" aimed at my best friend, and feeling lower than I had before I showed up.
Apparently, my verbal abuse rolled of Phil like water off a duck's back – I think that's the saying my dad used when he wanted to ignore something – because he was at my house, as usual, ten past four that afternoon, and acting like nothing had happened. I wondered again if his brain was too fried to `get it.'
"Aren't you gonna answer your cell phone?" Phil asked me.
Knowing who was probably calling, I reached into my pocket and silenced it. Dillon, who was with Phil, looked clueless until Phil asked; "that bad, huh?"
"You should try dating girls, man. They don't ever mess around on you."
Boy is Dillon naïve. He obviously doesn't know my mom very well.
Phil had brought a new X-box game with him, and before long I had settled in to taking out my frustrations on him and Dillon. It didn't make me feel much better but at least I wasn't obsessing over `Mr. I Got Love to Share,' Eduardo Herrera.
"So," I somberly ventured, "I hear you took Bethany Hillis out. God finally give you what you've been asking him for?"
Phil's face kind of got a stressed look on it. "She's really nice, but I kind of got roped into it. Lover boy," he said nodding toward Dillon, who was doing his best to look innocent of all wrongdoing, "set me up to go with him and Susan on a double-date. He told me if I wasn't gonna ask Bethany, he'd do it for me. She says she's good with not letting things get serious so I figured it'd be safe."
"Maybe you can get her to cut her hair short and skip the makeup," I teased, thinking about her rather narrow hips and flat chest.
"Shut up, okay? At least she's a..." Phil cut his words off but the damage had been done. I wasn't sure if I was going to scream or cry when my phone rang again.
"What?" I tersely shot off as I answered the phone.
"Ése! You finally answered your phone."
After a brief pause he pleaded, "Alex, I'm sorry, man. I'll do anything you wan', okay? I miss you so much. Please, jus' give me another chance, okay?"
I got up and ducked into the bathroom off my bedroom for a little privacy.
"I miss you so much, Alex. You're scarin' me, man. I didn't realize how much I need you until you were gone. We got to patch things up because there's like no one else in this town."
We must have talked for half an hour, and when I returned to my bedroom, Phil and Dillon were duking it out on the X-box. When Phil finally looked over at me sitting on the bed, he knew.
"Back together?"
I guess my smile kind of gave it away.
"It's just gonna be me and him from now on," I said, repeating what Eddie had promised.
Dillon looked shocked at the implication of what I said but didn't ask.
Tuesday morning when Phil got on the bus I saw him looking at my hand. I was actually trying to hide it from him even though I knew sooner or later he'd see the ring Eddie had given me.
"What'd you do to your hand? You're like holding it like you hurt yourself."
I pulled my hand back just enough for him to see the shiny silver band I had been covering up.
"You two got married?" he blurted out loud enough for Rebecca Lapp to turn and look our way.
"Shut up," I whispered loud enough for Phil to hear but not loudly enough to draw more attention to myself. "No one's supposed to know about it."
"You're gonna walk around all day holding your own hand? Like that won't be obvious."
"No one's gonna know what it's for unless you go blabbing around. It's not like other guys don't wear rings on their fingers."
"Congratulations, I guess. You'll make a great housewife."
At least he was whispering now.
"Ouch," I complained as he slugged my arm with his fist. I couldn't help but smile, knowing that it was Phil's way of telling me he was good with it.
"So does that mean we won't be hitting the park together anymore?" Phil looked genuinely concerned.
"It just means he's promised to not to do what he did to me last week anymore."
The `rents were out of town for the weekend and I was nervous as could be. When Daryl and I were little, mom used to dress us up and get us to play house together. I was always the mom and Daryl got to be the dad. It used to really get me that I always had to put on her old dresses and act like I was a girl, but ever since I caught Eddie checking out the guys in drag at that club, I had been wondering what it would be like to actually dress like that for someone because I wanted to do it instead of because they wanted me to. Today I was gonna find out.
I had secretly been checking out my mom's closet for the past several weeks, and when she told me they were gonna be out of town for the weekend, I knew I had to try it. Eddie had no idea what he was going to find when I told him I had a surprise for him when he arrived Saturday afternoon.
It was a silky, pale green, one piece. ...And it was short. I held it in my trembling hand, wondering if I really wanted to do it as I rummage through her dresser drawer for the appropriate undergarments.
Good thing for me, mom was tall and thin. If I had had to go out and buy these things, I never would have had the nerve to do it.
I had no clue about makeup, but after several trips to the bathroom to wash it off and try again, I was satisfied that it would do.
...Now for the dress. I slipped it on and it hung almost perfectly. That's when I noticed my hairy legs. I hadn't thought of that, and stood there wondering if pantyhose would work. My big toe shot right through the mesh before I even had them halfway on. I made my way to the bathroom and did what I never imagined I'd do. I shaved my legs clean while irrationally thinking the hair would grow back before PE class next week.
Last thing was to find shoes. How in the world do women walk in high heels? I set them beside the front door, and sat down on the sofa. Instead of slouching like I normally do, I sat up straight and experimented with crossing my legs this way and that. I was ready, and it was almost the time that Eddie said he would be here.
When I heard his car pull up, I squeezed into the shoes and tried to stand without falling – which was no small accomplishment.
He just stood there in the doorway and stared, at first looking surprised, and then with a smile broadening across his cute brown lips.
"Mamacita," he finally muttered. "You look so beautiful. Let's go out and show you off to the world."
The panic must have shown on my face, because he quickly changed his tune. "Or we could just stay here and smear your lipstick around."
We laughed and joked about going clubbing somewhere out of town so Eddie could show off his hot girlfriend. Mindlessly, I posed while he snapped picture after picture of me with his cell phone camera. I was having the time of my life until he mentioned how his mom wasn't gonna believe it was me. That's the first I realized that someone else might actually find out.
"You can't do that," I demanded. "No one gets to see those pictures."
"Oh yeah?" he teased. "You be a good little girl and daddy's gonna treat you right. ...then again, if you're a bad little girl, there's no telling who might get to see them."
He knew he overstepped his bounds when I grabbed the phone from his hand and threatened to stomp on it.
"Alex, I was jus' kidding you, man. I tol' you I wasn't gonna be sharing no more. That includes the pictures, okay?"
Boy was I naïve. Monday morning in homeroom, I saw Phil's eyes practically bulge out of his head when he looked over Eddie's shoulder and saw what Eddie was looking at. I must have been turning three shades of purple when his shocked gaze rose from the phone to me.
Phil was like a shrinking violet that afternoon on the bus. I'm sure neither of us knew what to say about what he had seen, but as was usually the case, he was first to talk.
"Trick photography?"
"I guess you could say that," I answered hesitantly. "Look, we were just having a little fun, okay? He saw some guy in drag at the club we went to last month and told me he thought it was funny, so I just did it like it was a dare or something.
"Phil, look; promise you won't tell anyone. I don't know why I did it. I mean it's weird, but it's like I like I wanted to do it `cause it makes Eddie like me even more. You think God's gonna like hate me even more for doing it?"
It was like Phil hadn't even heard my question, which was really strange. He never missed an opportunity to talk about God.
"If I tell you my biggest secret, then it'll be like we're even and then we can't tell on each other, right?"
"I guess so," I answered feeling a little better, and wondering if Phil was going to tell me he had a boyfriend I didn't know about.
"I decided to go out for the baseball team in the spring."
"That's your secret?" I asked incredulously.
"The secret is why I'm doing it. You know I've gone out with Bethany a couple of times, right?"
I nodded my head – still no secrets revealed."
"Well every time Dillon cons me into doing it, I feel worse than the time before. I just feel like I'm cheating her out of what she deserves. I met with my Youth Pastor last Sunday and told him everything. I told him about Casey, and about going to that camp. When I told him that going on dates with Bethany just made me think about what it was like with Casey, he pulled out some papers that had a bunch of information about something called ex-gay ministry.
"He told me that my feelings were something I had to work hard at overcoming and that doing guy things with other `straight' guys would make me feel more like the man God created me to be. It's really kind of depressing knowing I'm so screwed up. I... I think that picture was..."
He couldn't finish his sentence, but I had more than a good hunch that he was gonna say he liked it.
"And..." I pressed him, still not knowing what was so horrifying to Phil that made him think he was telling me some deep dark secret.
"I just don't know why I still feel like I'm gay. I mean, I've done everything they've told me to do, and it just doesn't seem like it's working. I was on the little league team for a couple of years. I did okay at hitting, but Ryan Gross used to always complain to the coach that I threw the ball like a girl. I'm just afraid if I try to be more macho it'll all blow up in my face."
It wasn't like Phil to beat around the bush like this. "So, your secret is?"
"Sometimes I think God's not going to change me – Like, for the rest of my life I'll be stuck wishing I could like guys. If anyone ever found out what I thought, I think they'd throw me out of church for not having enough faith. I don't want to turn my back on God because I know how much he changed other parts of my life, but... Well, it's just that I feel like I have to play some sort of game with this one thing so I can still be accepted by them."
"So you're saying you want me to know you think you might still be gay. ...and that you're good with that as long as I don't tell anyone else?"
"I don't even want you to tell it to me. I can't believe I'm even thinking like this, but I guess that's what I'm saying. I won't ask Eddie for your picture if you won't tell him I'm jealous of you for having the best looking guy in the whole school for a boyfriend."
"You really think so?" I asked, feeling elated that I wasn't the only one to think that.