Jumbo by Todd Young

Author:Todd Young [Young, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

28

The following day at school it was calculus first up as usual. Mitchell knew now — since Saturday — that he had a thing for Tadd, something that was feeling stronger and stronger. He had found himself thinking of Tadd, lying in bed on Saturday night, and again on Sunday. Even so, he was afraid of Tadd, afraid of how big Tadd was, how strong he was, and of his popularity. Mitchell could never say anything to Tadd. If he did something like that and Tadd responded badly, then Mitchell didn’t know what would happen, but it couldn’t be good.

Mitchell had seen Tadd fight in his freshman year. Some guy had said something to Tadd (Mitchell didn’t know what it was) but Tadd had got up and started pummeling the guy, moving forward step by step and punching punch after punch, connecting with the guy’s head time and time again until he finally fell backwards. The guy had ended up in hospital and Tadd had been suspended. There had even been charges laid.

At the time, when he saw it, Mitchell had peed in his pants, a little burst of pee, because he was so close to what was happening and had been afraid. It was that, probably more than anything else, that made Mitchell pull away from Tadd when Tadd touched him. Tadd was simply frightening.

Even so, Mitchell sat in his regular place in class, supposing that if Tadd came in before someone else took the seat next to him, Tadd would sit there. And as it turned out, this was what happened. Tadd was late, but no one had taken the seat. Tadd apologized to Mrs Jerlow, but she didn’t say anything about it, just said, “Take a seat, Tadd.”

“How you doing?” Tadd said as he sat down and started pulling his books out of his pack.

Mitchell’s heart turned over and he could barely breathe. “Fine,” he said, though he had to say the word twice because the first attempt was inaudible.

“How’s the puppy going?”

“Good. Great.”

Tadd smiled a lopsided smile.

“Tadd,” Mrs Jerlow said, calling his attention to the front of the class.

Thereafter followed forty minutes of calculus, most of which Tadd seemed to be coping with. Mitchell hoped Tadd would ask if he could come around on Saturday again, though he didn’t suppose Tadd would. They had pretty well caught up — and anyway, Tadd had a new girlfriend. Mitchell reminded himself of this fact and told himself to stop thinking about Tadd like that. He could end up being beaten to a pulp. Why the hell would Tadd have a girlfriend if he was gay?

Then Mitchell remembered the Kinsey scale. He had had a look at it on the net, and had then done some hard thinking, trying to see if he really was one of the few people who were exclusively gay. What he found frightened him, because he did have a feeling for girls, if he let his mind run that way. There was something there, though as he felt it, Mitchell wanted to pull away from it.

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