Absolutely Positively Not by David LaRochelle

Author:David LaRochelle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Rachel met me at the front door with her hands on her hips. Her hair today was a stark India ink black. “It’s been a while,” she said.

She was right. The two of us usually spent every weekend together, listening to music, discussing our classes, writing protest letters to multinational conglomerates, but ever since dating had taken over my life, I hadn’t had time for anything else. Even my lunch periods had been consumed with arranging future dates.

“I’ve been kind of busy,” I said.

“So I’ve heard.”

Rachel moved aside so I could enter. I carefully stepped over the golden retriever with a tail splint sleeping in the front hallway. Rachel’s parents ran a veterinary clinic and their house was always filled with stray and recuperating animals.

“Could we talk in your bedroom?” I asked. This wasn’t going to be a conversation I wanted her family to hear. I didn’t even want the dog eavesdropping.

“Whatever,” she said, and led me down the hall.

When we reached her room she scooped up a pair of gray kittens from the floor.

“Strays?” I asked.

“They were abandoned,” she told me. “Someone found them in a dumpster at the laundromat. We named them Downy and Bounce.”

She handed me the smaller one.

“Being abandoned really stinks,” she added.

Maybe this conversation wasn’t such a good idea after all.

She flopped onto her bed and put Downy on her stomach. I lowered myself onto a lime-green beanbag chair and let Bounce crawl onto my lap.

“So?” Rachel asked. “What’s the emergency?”

This was it. The moment of truth.

“Rachel, I want to talk about …”

Bounce began to nibble on my pinkie with its tiny sharp teeth.

“The reason I’ve been dating so much is because …”

The kitten began climbing up my arm.

“You see, I’ve been thinking that there’s a remote chance that I might be …”

A little sandpapery tongue began to wash the inside of my ear.

I pulled the kitten off my shoulder and set it on the floor.

“Rachel, I’m …”

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say the words. They clung to my vocal cords, refusing to leave the safety of my throat. Once I said them, I knew I could never again pretend that they weren’t true.

Rachel was sitting up now. She scooted to the edge of her bed and picked up Bounce so that both kittens were on her lap. All three of them looked at me expectantly.

I closed my eyes and booted the words out of my mouth.

“I’m gay.”

When I opened my eyes again, Rachel was diving toward me, arms outspread. The kittens leaped to the floor as Rachel wrapped me in a hug. “Steven! It’s about time!”

She must have misheard what I said.

I tried to wriggle out from beneath her, but only slipped deeper into the beanbag. It was then, while the two of us were still tangled in a knot, that Rachel’s mother walked into the room, carrying an armload of folded laundry.

“And what do we have here?” she asked.

Rachel scrambled to her feet. “Guess what? Steven finally told me that he’s gay!”

“That’s nice,” her mother said, setting the clothes on Rachel’s dresser.

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