Crossing Lines

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  OTHER BOOKS BY PAUL VOLPONI:

  Black and White

  Rooftop

  Rucker Park Setup

  Hurricane Song

  Response

  Rikers High

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2011 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Paul Volponi, 2011 All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Volponi, Paul.

  Crossing lines / by Paul Volponi.

  p. cm.

  Summary: High school senior Adonis struggles to do the right thing when his fellow football players escalate their bullying of a new classmate, Alan, who is transgendered.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-52904-1

  [1. Conduct of life—Fiction. 2. Transgender people—Fiction. 3. Bullies—Fiction. 4. Football—Fiction. 5. Family life—Fiction. 6. High schools—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.V8877Cr 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010033292

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THOSE WHO ARE BRAVE

  ENOUGH TO SET ASIDE WHAT THEY’VE BEEN TOLD

  AND DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES WHAT IS RIGHT.

  Special Thanks to Joy Peskin, Regina Hayes,

  Rosemary Stimola, April Volponi, Jim Cocoros,

  Mary Volponi, and Sabrina Volponi.

  “We all got holes to fill.”

  —TOWNES VAN ZANDT

  SOMETIMES YOUR SHOES CAN BE FILLED WITH

  garbage, and you don’t even know it. I understand that now. That it can take a long time to get your stuck-up nose down to where it belongs, down to where you can smell your own stink.

  The first time I ever laid eyes on Alan was late last May, in gym class. Junior year.

  It was during the warm-up, and we were all running laps around the red rubber track circling the athletic field.

  I was pushing myself to keep pace with Rodney Bishop and James Godfrey, two speedy wide receivers on the football team with me. We were coming up quick on Alan from behind, as his blond hair bounced against his bony shoulder blades. He must have heard our footsteps coming, because he cut from the inside lane onto the grass to let us go past.

  “Oh, shit! Did you see that fag?” asked Bishop, real loud. “I swear, I thought that new kid was gonna be a chick from behind.”

  “Yeah, you were about to holler at that homo and ask him out,” cracked Godfrey.

  I looked back over my shoulder and saw that Alan had stopped.

  I knew he’d heard Bishop, and I thought that expression on his face—somewhere between being really pissed off and ready to cry—was funny as hell.

  “Nah, I knew that was a faggot all along,” Bishop defended himself. “How ’bout you, Adonis? Did you know? ”

  “Are you kidding? ” I said as we leaned into the turn, three abreast. “I knew from fifty yards back. That’s why he runs so slow. His butt hurts.”

  “That why you’ve been getting slower? ” Godfrey cackled at Bishop. “Your butt hurts, too?”

  “That’s you. I’ll show you slow,” Bishop said, turning on the jets and pulling away.

  Godfrey sprinted after him.

  I tried to go with them. But a big offensive lineman like me couldn’t keep up, and they just left me in their dust.

  Alan had just transferred into Central High, and I’d have called it a rough beginning. I remember some of the other guys taking jabs at Alan, making comments about his tight-ass pants, asking him if he’d transferred from a high school in San Francisco, or calling him a fag to his face.

  I had run my mouth at him a few times, too, even though he never did anything to me or anybody else I knew.

  Other than that one time on the running track, I never saw Alan let a nasty remark go.

  He’d usually come right back at you with a sharp tongue, waving his finger around and saying things like, “If you want to be judge and jury, you should stand in front of the mirror more. That way you can talk to the source of your problem.”

  He even called a cafeteria table full of football players I was sitting at “pigs,” when one of us whistled at him as a joke.

  That kind of insult was almost funny coming from him, like he had the right to put himself over anybody.

  After that, whenever guys on the team saw Alan, we’d scrunch up our snouts like pigs and snort at him. Then the teachers and deans couldn’t get on us for using “inappropriate” language.

  I was convinced that hostility between Alan and the football team was all Alan’s fault.

  He could be gay if he wanted. There were probably some other kids at our school who were that way, too, or leaning there.

  But they didn’t make a show out of it, like Alan did. So nobody really cared.

  He didn’t have to flit around the hallways drawing attention to himself, swinging his hips and arms like a raging fem.

  And whatever shit Alan took on account of it, I figured he deserved.

  Alan didn’t have problems with most of the girls at school. I guess that’s because he was almost one of them. He’d usually be hanging around with a group of females, even good-looking ones. That got a lot of real guys even more annoyed, feeling like they couldn’t go over and make a move on one of them with him there. It would be too weird.

  When school broke for the summer, at the end of June, I didn’t see Alan again for a couple of months.

  I didn’t know what dudes like him did with their vacations. Maybe he was sitting in the library all day. Maybe he got a summer job serving cappuccino in a coffeehouse, or was at home plucking his eyebrows. Or ma
ybe he hung around some men’s room in a public park waiting to hook up with another queer.

  I just knew wherever Alan was, I wasn’t.

  And that was perfect with me.

  1

  I didn’ t see Alan again until early September. It was the Tuesday after Labor Day, on the first day of our senior year.

  He was in my English and gym classes, first and last period, every day.

  I made sure to sit on the other side of the room from him in English. And in gym, I was safe because I changed my clothes in the section of lockers reserved for varsity athletes, where I’d been changing for two years already, and where Alan was nowhere in sight.

  I never figured on Alan jumping up into my life past being in those two classes. But he did.

  It was just after one o’clock, but the first day of school was already over. We’d had a half day, with twenty-minute classes to get our program cards signed. I was walking across the athletic field with some of my teammates, heading towards the weight room—a beat-up trailer that used to store textbooks before it got converted into something useful. We were going to pump some serious iron and get ready for our first football game of the season the following week, after putting in a month of practices in the heat of August.

  “Spy what’s up on the bleachers,” Bishop said. “It’s Chick City. Just look at all those lovelies. There must be forty of them.”

  “Is that some kind of meeting they’re having?” asked Ethan, our quarterback and team captain. “I don’t remember them asking my permission. It’s never good when that many girls get together. All they do is compare notes and bitch about us.”

  Ethan was six foot two, the same height as me. Only he already had the kind of body I was lifting weights to get. His shoulders were as wide as mine, but his waist was probably seven inches smaller, and his muscles were really cut.

  Almost every girl I ever heard pass a comment about him used the word hot, even if they did call him a prick, too.

  And that’s what I wanted.

  “They’re probably deciding how far to go on a first date,” said Godfrey.

  “Send ’em a memo from me—it’s either all the way or the highway,” said Ethan, pounding a football between his huge paws. “I got a no-tease policy.”

  “Yeah, put out or get out of the car and walk home,” echoed Godfrey. “No middle ground on that.”

  Right away, my eyes settled on Melody Singer, a senior, who was sitting in the second row. I’d hung out with her a few times over the summer.

  The first time was with a bunch of other kids, including my sister, Jeannie, who was a year younger than me. Jeannie understood that I had it bad for Melody, so she set it up for me to tag along to this lightweight kegger. I was the only jock in the crowd, so I knew I’d stood out. Hardly anybody there, except for me, had more than two small cups of beer. And no one puked or got loud.

  I spent the whole night zeroed in on Melody, paying attention to what she said about a bunch of books I’d never read and the kind of movies I hadn’t seen.

  I’d wanted to get next to Melody for a long time. It was more than her just being pretty. She was smart, too. And there was something about Melody I couldn’t explain, something that jumped up and hit me over the head every time I laid eyes on her. But she usually had more guys falling over her than I could count. So the competition was always stiff, and I’d never made a real move on her before.

  Besides, I’d heard her say around school, “Football players and wrestlers are basically pinheads. I don’t like guys whose attitudes are bigger than their brains.”

  But I knew that Jeannie had put in a good word for me, and I made sure to agree with everything Melody said that night about those books and movies, even though I had to fake it.

  It all paid off for me a few days later, when Melody pulled into the service station where I had a summer job. She’d just got her license and her parents had bought her a used Chevy Cavalier.

  “It has a few little hiccups,” Melody told me, wrapping some strands of her long brown hair around a finger. “The previous owner said something about plugs and belts needing to be changed soon. Only I’m not exactly sure which ones. I’m totally clueless about anything that takes a screwdriver or a wrench.”

  “Listen, don’t fall into that stereotype of good-looking women not knowing anything about their rides,” I pitched her through the open driver’s window as I gassed up her tank. “It’s not about being a grease monkey. It’s all high-tech now. Car mechanics is a science. If you want, I could come by your place and teach you some of the basics.”

  I didn’t know how much of that rap I really believed. But it got me an afternoon alone with Melody in her driveway. Then a couple of movie dates after that, where I first slipped my arm around her, tasted those sweet lips, and took a walk with my hands as far as she’d let me.

  Suddenly, every one of those girls on the bleachers began clapping over something.

  “Thank you, ladies! Thank you!” yelled Bishop, without missing a beat. “I appreciate your worship!”

  There were a few laughs from the bleachers, and even a sarcastic, “You’re not welcome!”

  Just then those girls started getting up to leave.

  That’s when Melody saw me, and began waving.

  I bolted across the field towards her with the smell of the fresh-cut grass filling my lungs.

  “Adonis, look up!” Ethan shouted, a second before he zipped me a pass.

  I caught that pigskin in full stride and ran up to Melody with it tucked away beneath my left arm.

  “So what’s been going on here?” I asked her.

  “First meeting of the Fashion Club,” Melody answered with a wide pearly smile. “Big doings—we just elected officers.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” I said, trying to sound interested. “You know, lots of guys are into fashion, too. I know some of the most famous designers in the world are men.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. They’re some of my favorites—Ralph Lauren and Yves Saint Laurent. I’m pretty impressed you know that! Hey, I want you to meet someone,” Melody said excitedly, reaching out to spin somebody around by the shoulder to face me. “Adonis, this is our new Fashion Club president, Alan.”

  Everything inside me tensed up as my eyes locked onto his. That shrimp was almost a foot shorter than I was. And even standing on the bottom row of the bleachers, Alan was only eye level with me.

  “Oh, yes. Hello,” he said, flipping the tail end of a long scarf around his neck, like he was Snoopy, that bignosed dog from the Peanuts comics, ready to duel the Red Baron. “Adonis, you’re in two of my classes, aren’t you?”

  It freaked me out that Alan knew that, like maybe he’d been watching my ass. Or even worse, he had some kind of man crush on me. But with Melody there, I was fighting back every instinct I had to snort at him.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I answered.

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to formally meet you, Adonis,” he said, extending his small pale hand. “Any friend of Melody’s . . .”

  I normally would have left a loser like him hanging out there. But I couldn’t now. His grip felt so limp and clammy, I would have sworn I’d shoved my hand into a bowl of warm chowder.

  “That’s a very unusual name, Adonis,” Alan said. “It comes from Greek mythology, doesn’t it?”

  I wasn’t about to discuss anything Greek with Alan in public.

  “Yeah, how did you get that name?” Melody asked.

  “It was my mother’s idea. She studied art, and there’s some statue of a naked god with a perfect body named Adonis,” I said, watching Melody look me over from head to toe. “My father liked it, too, because of his favorite wrestler growing up—‘Adorable’ Adrian Adonis, who was the tag-team champ.”

  That’s when I heard a familiar voice call my name, and footsteps coming down the bleachers towards me.

  “I believe you already know our vice president,” Melody said.

  I looked up and it
was my sister Jeannie, who’d just become a junior.

  “Since when do you care about fashion?” Jeannie asked, smirking from ear to ear. “I mean, besides what the cheerleaders are wearing?”

  “I’ve got lots of interests you don’t know about,” I answered with some attitude.

  “Adonis, aren’t you going to congratulate your sister ? ” Melody asked, nudging my elbow. “Vice president’s a big honor, and I nominated her.”

  “Sure I am,” I said. “Congratulations, Jeannie.”

  “Oh, she’s a sweetheart, this one. She’ll do a great job,” Alan said.

  Then he kissed Jeannie on the cheek, with a long mmmmm-waa, and that was enough for me.

  “Hey, I gotta go. We’re weight training today,” I said, and turned my back to a chorus of good-byes.

  The guys were all standing at the door to the trailer, grinning at me. And I could feel my face getting redder and redder on the walk over.

  “You were pretty friendly with gay boy there,” said Bishop, with the rest of them already laughing. “What he want from you?”

  “Nothing. He wants a date with you after we’re finished,” I answered, tossing him the football. “I told him you’d definitely be into it.”

  THAT NIGHT, MOM HAD TO CALL JEANNIE DOWN TO DINNER twice. The second time, she used that reverse-psychology crap on her.

  “I don’t care, stay on the phone!” Mom yelled upstairs, like she was playing the class of third-grade kids she taught. “Barclay’s begging to trade his dog food for your pepper steak! I hope you like Alpo!”

  The steam rose off the plate in front of me, and my stomach was rumbling to join my nostrils in that feast. But me and Dad both knew Mom would have pitched a fit if either one of us lifted a fork before we were all seated at the table.

  “Jeannie, now!” Dad demanded. “Shake it or lose it!”

  Dad was only home three nights a week from his job as a firefighter, and his number-one rule was six thirty dinner together.