Noteworthy by Riley Redgate

Author:Riley Redgate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2017-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

At the end of rehearsal, Nihal and I set off together, as usual. Rehearsal hadn’t been different, just like Trav had promised. Of course, Trav was the only one talking, and the guy was as unchanging as a faulty chameleon, so that wasn’t saying much.

Nihal wrapped a thick woolen scarf around his neck as we set up the shallow hill toward August Drive. For a few minutes, we were quiet. As we crested the hill, he said, “Julian, I’m sorry everyone found out at once like that. As usual, Isaac couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

I shrugged, but my throat went tight, the same twinge I’d felt when I’d come across the trans resource website. I’d slipped beneath another mantle that wasn’t mine—as if I could understand what being a gay guy was like. All I understood about sexuality was its uncertainty, discovering your way through yourself day by day, stepping tentatively, hitting on some term that seemed to fit and hoping it stuck.

We hit the sidewalk and headed toward East Campus. Thick white clouds had settled over Kensington earlier this afternoon, and they had turned cannonball dark in the night. Our school’s towers and buildings reached toward the belly of the sky, outlined in orangey streetlight.

“It was good to see the guys like that, though,” Nihal said. “I mean, because . . . you know. You never know who comes from what sort of mindset. So it’s comforting.”

I glanced at him, not sure where he was going with this. I nodded.

“Comforting,” he continued, and from the strain in his voice—strain I’d never heard before—I realized what he was going to say before he said it. “Because I am, too, actually. Gay, I mean.”

I looked at Nihal, then, with his prominent nose pointing down at the pavement and his hazel eyes more guarded than I’d ever seen them. He said it like a shield. He said it like he’d never in his life said it out loud.

“Hey,” I said, stopping in my tracks. And for a second I considered telling him absolutely everything. Spilling the truth out in a rush, coming clean.

It caught in my throat. No, be smart. Be smart about this. I’d just gotten my freedom from the truth—it had happened like a miracle. Plunging myself back into that uncertainty, cold and thick and neck-deep . . . I couldn’t do that.

Nihal might tell. He’d told before.

Instead, I reached for his shoulder and let my hand rest there a second. He was a couple inches shorter than me, I realized. I’d always thought of Nihal as tall. Tree-tall, tree-solid, tree-serene. Right now, he was just a scared-looking boy a year and a half younger than me.

“None of the guys know?” I said quietly, lowering my hand.

“No.” We started walking again, approaching the crossroads where our paths usually split. “But being here is good,” he said. “There’s so many people who are, it feels normal. I started getting a grip on it at the end of last spring, and I was going to get back after summer and tell the Sharps, but now I can’t.

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