The Thunder in His Head Read online

  I gave her half a shrug. “Maybe.”

  “Which one?”

  I pointed at a dude in loose red knee-length basketball shorts and black sneakers who was shirtless. His wiry body did a lot for me even over a distance. And the fact that he had the darkest skin of the bunch was icing on the cake. I’m attracted to all kinds of guys—white, black, Latino, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander—the whole US Census Bureau spectrum. But I have this thing for dark-skinned brothers. Mom and Dad are both sort of a medium brown, and I, unfortunately, take after them.

  “Oh. That’s Terrence. He lives in the apartment upstairs from mine. He’s a nice kid.”

  “Does he swing my way?”

  In the rearview mirror, I could see Dad shifting as if he were sitting on a pile of sharp rocks.

  “I highly doubt it. He has a girlfriend.” Stephanie patted my arm reassuringly. “But I’ll keep my eyes open. If I come across a guy your age I think you’ll like, I’ll introduce you.”

  “Okay, cool. I appreciate you looking out for me.”

  “Can we go now?” Dad shot at me from the backseat.

  “Oh, don’t be so grumpy, Joey,” Stephanie shot back with a smile. She was the only person I knew who could get away with calling Dad that. He was “Joe” to everybody else, even Mom. “Gay is just another state of consciousness. It’s nothing to get uptight about.”

  “I’m not uptight,” Dad replied. “I’m starving.”

  Two

  THE next morning, I sat on a bench outside the main entrance of Pemberton Academy with my two closest friends, Jillian Byrd and Chaney “Chain” Moore. We’d known one another since seventh grade, after Mom talked Dad into buying that too-big-for-us house in Oakland and plunking me down in Pemberton. Jill, Chain, and I were all in the same Social Studies class that year and bonded over our hatred of the teacher, Mr. Stoneham, who talked too loud, too fast, and wore the funkiest cologne this side of an oil refinery.

  Jill, blonde and green-eyed, had grown from a chubby girl into a slim hottie who turned a lot of male heads. I’d swear she was anorexic, because the last time I saw her put food in her mouth was two years ago. There were third graders who were taller than Chain had been at the time we met. He and I had both been sort of dorky and definitely skinny back then. Chain had gained a few inches and lost the dorkiness, but he was still short and still thin as a stick. Tall for my age even at that time, I’d hit some kind of freakish growth spurt, sprouting up to six foot four with no end yet in sight. My muscles had filled out too. Dad said if I worked out, I could be a real powerhouse.

  I had out my phone, texting back and forth with Rollo, a guy who’s in my World History class. He was riding the bus to school and trying to finish up the essay on the Sumerians we had to turn in today. I was feeding him info to plug into his essay. Jill and Chain had out their phones too, texting away with whomever, so I wasn’t being rude. It’s what we did together every morning before class.

  “Kyle. What’s up?”

  The three of us raised our heads.

  Ty Simmons was taking the steps up from the street two at a time. He was neither as tall nor good-looking as his dad, but he was handsome enough to have the girls around school working double-time for his attention. I’d never met his mom, but I figured she must be white. His skin was much lighter than his dad’s, and his hair was curly, thick, and glossy black. He was built like a jock, but the closest he’d come to any kind of sport before now was skateboarding. Most of his free time was spent playing guitar with his band, Infamy. He was seventeen, a grade ahead of me, and I’d never paid much attention to him until my mom hooked up with his dad.

  I gave him a nod in greeting. He paused at the top of the steps, smiling at me. “Hey, I want to go over some of the drills before practice starts next week. Think you can help me out with that?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. When?”

  “How about this afternoon?”

  “Okay. Come by my mom’s. Four o’clock.”

  “Cool. See ya then.” He hoisted his backpack higher on his shoulder and sauntered into the building.

  Jill turned her head slowly, her eyes following his bouncing walk until the doors shut behind him.

  “Damn,” Chain muttered, shaking his head at her. “Why didn’t you just take a freaking picture?”

  Jill ignored him, turning to me. “That Ty is so cute.”

  I shrugged, going back to my texting.

  “You don’t think he’s cute?”

  I gave another shrug. “Never thought of him that way. Besides, he could be my stepbrother someday.”

  “Lucky you. Maybe I should come by and watch you guys do drills.”

  “Yeah,” Chain said snidely. “You can keep Ty’s girlfriend company.”

  Jill sent me a worried look. “You don’t think she’ll be there, do you?”

  Chain shook his head at her again, a strained smile on his face. “You are so pathetic.”

  Jill grabbed her backpack, tucked her phone into the little purse cinched around her narrow waist, and stood up. “See you guys in study hall.” She waved at some girlfriend of hers and hurried over to walk into the building with her.

  “She’s so damned spacey these days,” Chain groused, watching her go.

  Rollo was getting on my nerves. I was about to tell him to just read the damn history book when a message from Mom came through. “Why don’t you ask her out already?” I suggested as I thumbed aside Rollo’s last message and brought Mom’s to the front of my screen.

  “I don’t want to take Jill out,” Chain replied with a huff.

  “The hell you don’t.” Mom’s message was that she would be working from home this morning, but she had an interview with the county mayor in downtown Memphis this afternoon and would be home late. I sent back “OK” to her and then proceeded to tell Rollo to go to hell. “Who do you think you’re fooling, Chain? I see the way you’ve been looking at her.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” He turned off his phone and shoved it into his pocket, slumping on the bench like a sack of potatoes. His uniform, I just noticed, was wrinkled and dirty. There were smudges of dried mud around the cuffs of his pants. Chain sometimes seemed oblivious to his appearance.

  “Come on,” I said. “If you like her that way, go for it. You’ll never know what could be until you ask her.”

  “Kyle, I already asked her. She doesn’t see me that way. She said I’m like one of her brothers.”

  I frowned. “For real?”

  “Yeah, for real.”

  “Well, Jill’s not the only game in town. Just look around you, dude.” I scanned the kids filling the sidewalk and grounds in front of the school, hanging out in their little cliques. Even though the girls all wore the same uniform—knee-length blue-plaid skirt, white blouse, gray or blue blazer—there were plenty who stood out, some tall, some petite, some slender, some thick with curves, and all of them attractive. “Over there. Cynthia Graves is just as hot as Jill.”

  “Cynthia’s going with Lorenzo Rice.”

  “Okay. Then there’s Myrna James.”

  Chain snorted. “Myrna’s got a crush on Cynthia. And on Gloria Gibson. And on Abigail Perry.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Word gets around.”

  “That don’t make it true, man.”

  “It doesn’t matter either way,” Chain said, his voice getting loud with frustration. “Bottom line is, Myrna doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

  I nodded toward another girl. “What about Penny Wells? She’s got great eyes, great legs, a nice set of mammary glands.”

  “Mamma what?”

  “Boobs, man. She’s got great boobs. If you’re into that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah, she does. She’s beautiful. So what would she want with me?”

  “Damn, Chain. How do you expect girls to want you when you keep shooting yourself down like that?”

  “No, they shoot me down, Kyle. I’m just empty space to them. I’m
not a giant like you and some of the other dudes around here. I’m too short and too skinny. I’m just not… attractive.”

  “One thing’s for certain. You throw a hell of a pity party.”

  “Okay. If I was gay, would you try to get with me?”

  I hesitated for way too long. “I don’t think of you that way, man. You’re like a brother to me.”

  Chain’s chin dropped miserably to his chest.

  “Listen, you can’t give up. Jump back in there, go after any female who catches your eye. Be confident, be funny. Tell her how good she looks. And stop coming to school looking like you pulled your clothes out of the dump. That’s how guys get girls.”

  “Why should I keep trying to talk to these girls when they humiliate me to my face?”

  “Maybe if you—”

  “Just shut up!” Chain snapped. He folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, a scowl on his face.

  “Whatever.” I switched my phone over to game mode and started playing Solitaire.

  YOU may think I’m hardly qualified to give a straight guy advice on how to mack a girl. Believe it or not, I know whereof I speak. I flirt with some of the girls around school, and from the way they respond, I could get into a lot of panties if I wanted to. Of course, I’d probably gag if any of them gave me even a peek at their stuff, but I like flirting with them because it’s fun. It’s good practice too, because I use the same techniques on guys.

  Sadly, I haven’t been able to seriously flirt with a guy yet. It’s one thing to tell a dude he has a cute butt in the middle of a basketball game. That gets the guy all flustered and upset, throwing him off his game and making it easier for me to wipe him off the court. But around school, there just isn’t any guy I have a chance in hell of getting with. The only other openly gay dude at the academy is Hunter Cavanaugh, and he slams the sash in sashay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m just not attracted to that type. I want a guy who looks, walks, and talks like a guy. (Like Reece, for example.)

  I’m sort of in the same boat as Chain. He spends every day surrounded by hot-as-hell girls who are, in his mind, unattainable. I spend every day surrounded by hot-as-as hell guys who are, as far as I know, straight and beyond my reach. It’s especially bad in PE and at basketball practice, where for roughly fifteen minutes twice a day I actually see masculine goods in all their glory. I don’t go popping wood and staring around the showers with my tongue hanging out. And nobody makes a big deal about sharing the showers with me. The coach, the other guys, and I early on arrived at an unspoken, never-negotiated arrangement. When it comes to the showers, they ignore the fact that I’m gay, and I don’t leer, swoon, or go “Good God, what glutes!” (At least not out loud.)

  Actually, showering with a bunch of teenage boys can be one of the least sexy experiences in life, if you want to know the truth. They do things in the locker room that don’t exactly encourage the libido, such as belching like walruses, pissing down the drain, scratching in places polite people avoid when they’re not alone, and trumpeting wind at each other. Still, when they’re naked and acting human, some of them present very appealing eye candy, which I do my best to ignore.

  But, damn, there’s only so much a body can take.

  My sex drive had turned on somewhere around the age of eleven. I started crushing on other boys, wanting to hold hands and kiss. Five years later, I still didn’t know what it was like to touch another guy that way. I had a basic fantasy of being naked in the dark with a dude. His body was always sleek and manly, but the face would change, based on the guy I was currently hot for. Initially, those dream sessions had us standing face to face, drinking in the sight of each other. Then, slowly and sweetly, I would reach out and pull him to me. His hands would rub up and down my back. My hands would rub his chest. We would kiss, lips touching in tiny, chaste pecks. He would close his eyes as we kissed, and I would simply drown in the sweetness of his face, so wonderfully close to mine.

  Now, Reece’s face kept slipping into my fantasy, and I had to keep forcing it out. There had always been the buffer of a certain distance with the other guys I’d crushed on—I only saw them at school, or on television, or in the movies. But Reece was too close. He was coming into my home. He was dating my mother, for God’s sake.

  There just didn’t seem to be any way to turn off my attraction to him. And that, I was sure, was going to lead to trouble.

  I GOT home at 3:50 that afternoon. Mom had left a note on the door of the fridge telling me she’d made chicken salad for my dinner. She used to mix raisins, grapes, and chopped apples into her chicken salad to make sure that I got my daily serving of plants. Some foods aren’t meant to meet in the same dish. Fruit and chicken together turns my stomach, just as marshmallows on sweet potatoes do at Thanksgiving. I had to promise Mom that I’d eat a whole garden to stop her from messing up the chicken salad that way. I grabbed a banana and gulped it down as I took the stairs up to my room.

  I kicked off my loafers and got out of my uniform, hanging up the gray blazer and navy slacks in my closet so I could wear them again tomorrow. The white polo shirt had a grimy ring around the collar and got tossed on the floor. The grime made me anxious. My parents had me doing my own laundry now and knocking out ring-around-the-collar took a hell of a lot of scrubbing. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Just as I was shoving my feet into my sneakers, the doorbell rang.

  I tromped back downstairs. As I opened the front door, I saw Ty, who was standing on the porch, turn and wave. I looked past him, expecting to see his girlfriend, Carla, in her little bright blue Honda at the curb. Instead, a silver Corvette was there. A guy was behind the wheel, but I only caught a glimpse of him, silhouetted in the shadowy interior, as he waved and pulled away.

  Ty turned back to me. “Hey, Kyle.” He had exchanged his school uniform for a black jersey and baggy, knee-length black shorts.

  “Hey, Ty,” I greeted him in return. Reece had brought Ty and his sister Jami over about a month ago for dinner. It was his and Mom’s way of introducing their kids to each other. I was so uncomfortable I could barely eat, and Ty and Jami were just as stilted toward me as I was toward them. Over the intervening weeks, however, Ty and I had gotten to know each other, sort of, so I was more relaxed with him now. “Come on. The goal’s around here.”

  I stepped outside and led him over to the garage, where Dad had mounted a goal over the door back when I was ten.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Ty said as he followed me. “I’m not into basketball all that much. I don’t want to get to practice next week and embarrass myself.”

  “If you’re not into basketball, why’d you try out for the team?” I asked bluntly, nabbing my basketball from under the bush, where it had rolled after my last session. “And why’d you wait until your senior year to do it?”

  “It was my dad’s idea. He thought it would look good on my college applications.”

  “Yeah, my mom’s starting to make noise about college, even though I’m still looking at two years of high school.”

  Ty nodded sympathetically. “It’s crazy. My mom and dad are always going on and on about how I should be more independent, think for myself, make my own decisions. But they never ask me if I want to go to college, they just tell me to put in applications, study, study, study, take the SAT again and shoot for a higher score.”

  “You don’t want to go to college?”

  “Hell no. I’m not good with the books. I’m lucky to keep a C average. I just go along to keep them happy. Dad wants me to play basketball, I’ll play basketball. Mom wants me to send off applications, I’ll send off applications. But when it comes down to it, it’s my life, and I’m not going to college. After graduation, I’m hitting the road with my band.”

  At that moment, I actually admired the guy. “Hey.” I held out my fist, and we bumped.

  We lined up side by side about three feet from the rim. I started Ty on the Mikan drill, going up off my left leg and ho
oking a shot with my right hand off the backboard and through the basket. Rebounding the ball, I fed it to him. He went up, imitating the move, but he was off a bit when he put the ball to the backboard and missed the basket. He rebounded and passed the ball back to me. We alternated back and forth that way for maybe twenty minutes, until he started getting the hang of the drill.

  After that, I moved him back about seven feet and we went into a distance-shooting drill, firing off jump shots. Every one of mine dropped right through the net. Every one of Ty’s was off, all of them either falling short or slamming into the backboard and flying across the yard. He was too loose, unfocused, his don’t-give-a-damn attitude coming through bright and clear. If he was like this in tryouts, I couldn’t see how in hell he had made the cut with Coach. Reece must have called in some favors, paid a bribe, or given up a kidney to get Ty on the team.

  That drill quickly melted into a lazy game of one-on-one. We had a good time. For somebody who wasn’t into sports, Ty was a good trash-talker. I liked that about him. I got him with jokes about how his mom could use his wiry-haired head as a Brillo pad, and he came right back with jokes about sailing around the world in one of my sneakers.

  I lost track of time, the way I always do when I’m having fun. It surprised me when the silver Corvette returned, pulling to a stop at the end of the driveway.

  “There’s my ride,” Ty said. He let the ball slip from his hands and bounce away. “That was great, man. Thanks for the workout.” Out of breath, he palmed sweat from his forehead and slapped it on my back.

  I shot out an arm to put him in a headlock. He ducked, laughing, and went running for the car. I gave chase. He was faster, but my long legs more than made up for his speed, and I caught him just as he got the passenger door open and tried to slide into the car. I got my arm around his neck just as he tripped and stumbled backward, pulling me with him.