Crossing Lines Read online

  “I grew up the youngest of seven kids. I barely knew my older brothers and sisters by the time they were out of the house,” Dad had told me a hundred times over. “Your grandfather, God rest his soul, was a laborer. He came home exhausted every night, and never wanted to hear a word out of us while he was eating. So he was half a stranger to me, too. That’s not going to happen in this family. I promise. I’m going to hear you. And you’re going to know what I’m thinking.”

  “Call me back later then,” Jeannie said, snapping her cell phone shut and stuffing it down into a pocket as she slid into her seat. “Sorry, Fashion Club business.”

  “Are they paying you?” Dad asked her.

  “No. Why?” said Jeannie, sounding confused.

  “Then it’s not business and we’re still your only bosses,” Dad said, pointing back and forth between Mom and himself with the dull edge of a knife.

  “Your daughter was elected vice president,” said Mom.

  “Hey, that’s wonderful,” Dad said. “I see all of that clothes shopping finally got you somewhere.”

  “Very funny, ha-ha,” said Jeannie.

  “I’m just kidding,” Dad added under a glare from Mom. “That’s great news.”

  “Dad, now get this, the president’s the one dude in the club,” I said, chewing on a piece of meat. “And he’s gay.”

  “Well, who did you expect him to be, Tarzan of the Apes?” said Dad.

  “You don’t know for sure Alan’s gay,” Jeannie said.

  “Why? Did he come on to you?” I asked her.

  “No. Did he come on to you?” she rifled back.

  “Oh, I forgot, macho man kissed you on the cheek,” I said.

  “Let it go, the two of you,” Mom said. “I’ll have you know your father kissed me on the cheek at the end of our first date.”

  “Yeah, but I was just reeling you in slow,” said Dad. “Anyway, I have to trust my son on this one. I taught him to know the difference.”

  “Really? ” said Jeannie. “And what kind of sick, homophobic lesson was that?”

  “Is he, Adonis?” Dad asked, brushing off Jeannie’s question.

  Jeannie bit her lip hard, and I could tell Dad had gotten under her skin.

  So I just let my wrist go limp in response, to really irk Jeannie.

  “Do you believe them?” Jeannie asked Mom.

  “This is how most men work out their fears,” Mom answered. “It’s almost like they never leave high school. Or is it junior high? I don’t encourage it inside this house. But believe me, it’s better than them doing it in public.”

  “Funny how Adonis had an interest in the Fashion Club when he was talking to Melody Singer,” said Jeannie.

  “Of course. He’s a dog just like his old man,” said Dad with a wide grin.

  I liked hearing that so much I sneaked Barclay a strip of steak beneath the table.

  “Are there any gay students in your school?” Mom asked.

  “How should I know?” I answered.

  “You seem to be keeping track,” Jeannie said with her eyes on mine. “Not that I know of, Mom. I’m sure there are, though. They just don’t advertise it.”

  “All right, that’s enough gay talk,” said Dad, stabbing at another piece of meat on his plate. “What exactly goes on in this Fashion Club, Jeannie? I know you’re too old to play dress-up.”

  “I get a chance to show off my designs and get some feedback. I’m thinking that’s what I might want to be, a fashion designer,” she said. “But other girls have different goals. Some want to be models. Others girls just want to celebrate their sense of style.”

  “See, you said it, ‘girls,’” I sniped. “There are no guys in your club.”

  “Enough of that, Adonis,” Mom said in a stern voice, gripping her water glass.

  “How did your classes go?” asked Dad. “You know, the real reason you go to school, besides fashion and football.”

  Jeannie and me said, “Fine,” almost in harmony, like we were part of the glee club.

  “And how was your first day at school, Mom? ” asked Jeannie.

  “My students are all lovely, thirty-five little attention seekers who can’t stop talking.”

  I thought how I could never be a teacher, and have a first day of school every year for the rest of my life.

  Towards the end of dinner, Jeannie’s phone rang.

  She pulled it from her pocket and looked at the display.

  “It’s Alan,” she said, pushing away her plate. “Mom, it’s important. We need to come up with an agenda for tomorrow’s meeting. And I’m done eating. Can I be excused? ”

  “Take it into the living room,” Mom told her.

  As Jeannie left the table, Dad called after her, “Let me talk to this Alan. I’ve got a question for him.”

  “No!” Jeannie hollered back.

  “I just want to ask why he’s calling during dinner hour,” said Dad. “Doesn’t his family share this time?’Cause he’s sure as hell interfering with ours.”

  2

  Mr. D’Antoni, one of those long-haired hippie types with a ponytail, was our English teacher. You could be different like that if you were into poems and plays, and people wouldn’t think much about it. I knew lots of girls at school worshiped D’Antoni over all that self-expression nonsense he preached. I’d had him for English before as a sophomore, and as a homeroom teacher, too. He could be a real pain, asking you to explain your answers fully, or talk about how a story made you feel deep inside. And he was always quoting some kind of stupid poetry about how the whole world could be found in a single leaf of grass. I figured that when it came to grass, D’Antoni probably got so strange by smoking plenty of it.

  “We’re going to start off the semester with a group project,” D’Antoni announced on the second day of school. “This may seem like a strange question for English class, but raise your hand if you know the names of at least ten sports teams.”

  My hand shot up right away. So did the hands of most kids, except for a few of the girls, and Alan.

  “Good, we have a foundation of knowledge to begin with,” said D’Antoni. “Does anybody know the nickname of the football team that plays in Baltimore?”

  “Ravens ! ” I shouted, along with several other kids.

  “That’s right. But now I want you to all to think, how did they get that name?” D’Antoni asked.

  There was about thirty seconds of near silence. Then one of the girls said, “Since this is English class, I’m going to guess it’s got something to do with that poem ‘The Raven.’”

  “You’re very correct,” said D’Antoni. “Point of fact, Poe didn’t write his famed poem ‘The Raven’ in Baltimore. He wrote it either in Philadelphia or New York, in eighteen forty-five, I believe. But he did die in Baltimore, in eighteen forty-nine, where he’s still buried today. He was found delirious on the streets, dressed in someone else’s clothes, hours before he died.”

  “Then why did Baltimore name their team after that poem, instead of New York or Philly?” someone else asked.

  “His grave’s a tourist attraction in Baltimore. It’s a case of, We’ve got the body, we get to celebrate him,” answered D’Antoni. “Now, what’s the name of our school’s sports teams?”

  “Wildcats!” everybody said, even Alan.

  Then a guy in the front row gave our school cheer, ripping his hand through the air, like his fingers were sharp claws, as he growled, “Gggrrrrrrrrr!”

  “Why are we the Central High Wildcats? ” D’Antoni asked. “Wildcats are native to Europe, Asia, and Africa, not anywhere around here.”

  Nobody had a real answer, and neither did D’Antoni.

  “I looked it up,” he said. “It’s the most popular name of school teams in America. Other than that, I can’t find a reason it should be ours. But I’ll expect your groups, which will be comprised of four students, to use a little more creativity when you get assigned a city to research from one of these unmarked envelopes. T
hen you’ll give that city a brand-new team, with a nickname, a sport to play, and a logo.”

  I was psyched to hear that was actually schoolwork.

  Two of my teammates, Toby and Marshall, who played on the offensive line with me, were already looking over in my direction. I nodded to them. I was even considering the chunky girl sitting next to me, who never dated and was all about her grades, as a fourth, in case the three of us slacked off on whatever writing part there probably was to do.

  Toby wasn’t much of a student, and mostly got the kind of passing grades that teachers give you for showing up every day. As sad as it sounds, he helped pull Marshall along in school, double-teaming homework assignments. And I’d helped them both out last year, trying to keep our offensive line together and not flunking off the team.

  I wasn’t up for any academic awards either. But at least I knew what a B-plus looked like. I figured if I could get a decent grade in subjects I wasn’t interested in, I’d be golden on any kind of sports project. And working with those guys would make the whole thing even more like fun and less like schoolwork.

  Only D’Antoni put an end to all that.

  “I don’t want these groups to be made up of the regular cliques,” he said. “This project’s a beginningof-the-semester icebreaker as much as it’s an academic experience. So I’m going to use a number sequence, hopefully to create groups of students who normally don’t work together.”

  There were twenty-eight kids in class, and D’Antoni had us count off from one to seven.

  “Three,” said Alan in a soft voice, when his turn came.

  The odds were against it, so I just laughed at the thought of getting stuck with him in my group.

  Then, as kids in the row next to mine counted off, the numbers added up fast inside my brain, and I knew I was about to be screwed.

  I was ready to dive into another chair, to change the count.

  But D’Antoni must have seen me start to move, because his eyes settled on mine, and I was stuck.

  When it was my turn, I put every bit of bass into my voice that I could and said, “Three.”

  A minute later, chairs were sliding all around me as everyone moved to get into their groups. I sank down in my seat like I could ignore it, refusing to move. But in the end, Alan and two girls came over to where I was.

  “Hello, Adonis,” he said, way too happy and loud.

  Toby and Marshall must have heard him, because they both snorted. Alan shot them a cold stare. I just kept my mouth shut and let their insults stand as my reply.

  Maxine, one of the girls in our group, knew Alan from the Fashion Club. And I had to watch the two of them hug, kissing the air next to each other’s cheeks.

  That’s when D’Antoni walked past us and said, “Perfect, two men and two women here.”

  I wanted to yank him back by the ponytail, telling that hippie to open his eyes and look again. That I was the only guy in this group.

  “I’ll bet Adonis is going to want to do a football team,” Alan said.

  “You think I want to do a football team?” I asked him, snide.

  “Well, that’s your favorite sport, isn’t it?” he said.

  “It’s not about me. Maybe you want to do a football team. But I don’t.”

  “Oh, I see. Would you like to do a women’s football team, Adonis?” Alan asked with a smirk.

  “I love synchronized swimming and gymnastics,” Maxine interrupted. “Do those kinds of teams have names?”

  And that little joust between me and Alan was finished.

  D’Antoni explained to the class that two members of each group would research the history of the city we got assigned, and the other two would find out all about the sports people played around there, and the team names the city already had.

  Then he called one student up from each group to pick an envelope. The city inside the one that Maxine chose for us was Cincinnati, Ohio.

  “If it’s all right, I’ll do facts about the city,” Alan said. “I love learning the history of places I’ve never been.”

  “Fine. I want to do the sports part,” I said.

  So Maxine and Alan became partners, and I worked with the other girl, Wendy.

  Maxine was as cool as could be, always wearing some kind of funky outfit and different kinds of shades—big round ones, tiny ones that balanced on the tip of her nose, or glasses with the frames covered in glitter.

  Wendy was the opposite. She dressed pretty plain and never made much noise. I recognized her from a few classes we’d had together. But I wasn’t completely sure of her name until she said it.

  “What a wonderful name,” Alan told her when he first heard it. “That’s from Peter Pan. It’s one of my favorite stories.”

  “I hear that a lot, maybe too much,” said Wendy. “I was never a big fan of the story. I always thought it was depressing—the way Wendy’s parents treated her, and how Peter didn’t want to grow up.”

  “Oh, don’t think about it that way,” said Alan. “Look for the magic in it, the freedom of flying wherever you want, in any world.”

  I figured Alan could be Tinker Bell, the way he flitted around. He was small enough. And all he was missing were the wings and the fairy dust.

  Then Maxine said, “What if we dressed our sports team like Peter Pan?”

  “Green tights and pointy shoes for uniforms. And one of those little caps with a tickle-me feather in it,” said Alan. “Girl, you could be a fashion trendsetter.”

  “You’re too late with that thought. I already am one,” answered Maxine, winking at Alan.

  “Wait, that’s not the assignment, designing uniforms,” said Wendy.

  “That’s right, it’s not,” I added.

  I was about to be sick to my stomach, when D’Antoni made it even worse by handing out a poem.

  “I think this one by Walt Whitman fits the circumstances of an icebreaker rather well,” he said. “Read it in your groups and then discuss. See if you learn a little more about each other from it.”

  There was a picture of Whitman at the bottom of the page, and I understood why D’Antoni must have liked him so much. He looked like the world’s biggest hippie, with a wild and filthy bird’s nest for a beard. Besides that picture, the only thing I knew about Whitman was that his name was on the heartshaped box of chocolates me and Jeannie chipped in to buy for Mom every Valentine’s Day. It was called a “Whitman’s Sampler.”

  “I’ll read it,” Alan told our group, without getting an argument, especially from me.

  “‘Are you the new person drawn toward me?’” he started off.“To begin with take warning, I am surely far

  different from what you suppose;

  Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

  Do you think it so easy to have me become your

  lover?”

  After hearing crap like that from Alan’s mouth, I plugged out on the rest, turning my copy of it over to the blank side.

  EVEN THOUGH I HAD A DRIVER’S LICENSE, I DIDN’ T HAVE A WHIP of my own yet. So that same day, after football practice, I caught a ride home with Ethan. And as we pulled up in front of my house and saw all the cars parked in the driveway, I recognized Melody’s metallic blue Cavalier right away.

  “Your sis throwing a party or something? ” Ethan asked.

  “Must be the girls in that Fashion Club,” I answered. “The ones on the bleachers from yesterday.”

  “Adonis, invite me in,” Ethan said, combing his hair in the rearview mirror. “I’m up for a babe-mingle.”

  “All sweaty like this?” I said, and sniffed at my pits where I’d cut the sleeves off a T-shirt. “The two of us reek.”

  “Believe it or not, that musky scent gets girls going. It’s all subconscious, ignites their hormones. I read about it in one of those men’s health magazines.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, taking a second sniff.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Sex isn’t personal. It’s all chemistry,” Ethan said. “You
just need to mix the right formula.”

  “Okay, but remember, Melody’s mine.”

  “There’s plenty to go around. I’m not going to plant my flag on your turf,” Ethan assured me. “Not in your own house.”

  “I may need you to run interference for me and talk to whoever’s near her, so I can get some one-on-one time. The same way I block those D-linemen for you to make a pass on the field.”

  “I got your back today, bro. But if she’s surrounded by dog meat it’s not happening. Hey, what if she’s sitting on the couch next to your mom, looking at junior-high photos of your pudgy ass wearing braces?”

  “It couldn’t get any worse than that. Just tackle me on the stop,” I answered, slamming the car door behind me and hauling my helmet by the face mask with my shoulder pads sitting snug on top of it.

  I opened the front door and found the living room full of Jeannie’s friends, talking and looking at fashion magazines in three or four different circles.

  Barclay was hyped over all that company, and when me and Ethan walked inside, he began barking. Then he raced up to Ethan and started sniffing at his crotch. And he wouldn’t stop, no matter how many times Ethan shoved him away.

  “Come on, Barclay boy. Quit it,” said Ethan, with most of the girls laughing hysterically over it.

  “Barclay, down!” I ordered without any success.

  I could see the embarrassment on Ethan’s face right before he asked, “Adonis, since when did your dog turn homo?”

  That’s when all the laughing stopped, and I noticed Alan was part of the crowd.

  “Ethan, honey, we don’t use that kind of hateful language in this house,” said Mom, who was in the living room, too.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Ethan in an overly polite voice. “I apologize.”

  Melody was looking right at me. So I nodded to her with an approving smile, like Mom had handled Ethan perfectly.

  Then Alan walked to the middle of the living room and cleared his throat.

  “Miss Vice President, I think we’ve accomplished our agenda here of trying to organize our first fashion show, and more,” Alan announced, looking at my sister. “Thanks to you and your family for letting us meet in your lovely home.”