The next morning, as I was getting ready for school, I suddenly found myself spending twice as much time in the shower as I normally would—scrubbing myself off, thank you—even though I wasn't particularly dirty. And I was suddenly choosier about the clothes I was going to wear to school than normal. I even slunk into my dad’s study to use his cologne, because I didn't own cologne and I suddenly felt like I needed to wear some.

I had a hunch my irrational behavior had to do with Wes, but the weird thing is, we didn’t even have any classes together that day. Still, I found my thoughts drifting to him during the day more often than warranted, more often than I cared to admit, frankly, which was weird because it never happened to me before. Suddenly, I had to go back to reading the same paragraph twice in class, because my focus was elsewhere. None of it was about studies anymore—it was all about Wes. Suddenly, he was all I could think of.

“You okay, child?” Nia asked at lunch, unintentionally jolting me awake from all my thinking about Wes and daydreaming. She startled me, and I startled her in return with my inadequate reaction, and I dropped my fork, and spilled her juice, and suddenly it was this whole thing . . .

When emotions settled down, she asked, “What in God’s name . . . ?” with her hands on her chest and her eyes bulging. “You well?”

“I’m fine, it's fine. I’m fine!” I tried. But naturally, she didn't believe me. She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Uh-huh . . .” she intoned.

“It’s nothing,” I said, “Everything’s fine,” though not very convincingly. “You never believe me. I always tell you the truth, but you just . . . Never believe me.”

Now she was convinced I wasn't fine. I kept my eyes down and my mouth shut to avoid spewing any more nonsense.

For a moment, she considered my behavior quietly. And then she gasped, shook by sudden realization, and jabbed her index finger at me. “You had that thing with Weston Brooks yesterday, didn't you? Is that why you're like this? Did something happen? Did he hurt you?”

I shook my head vehemently.

“No! It’s nothing. It wasn’t a thing. Nothing happened! He didn't hurt me,” I gushed.

Nia looked confused. And then her worry was suddenly replaced with a sort of amusement, her expression softened, and she said, “Oh!” with a widening smile.

“No, oh!” I said. “Nothing happened. Let's just drop it, all right?”

She huffed irritably but turned away from me, giving me space. I knew there was more to come, though, now that she knew Weston Brooks was a thing.

We never actually discussed my being gay with her. Not in so many words. But I think she had an inkling. The amount of times she caught me looking at boys. Or us watching romcoms together. Or some of the mannerisms I wasn't trying to conceal as hard when it was just the two of us. And just in general, the sheer amount of time we spent together since childhood—she knew me better than anyone. I think she would have been okay if I told her. But every god-damned time I thought of bringing it up, I chickened out.

The way that she was grinning ear to ear right now, though—she knew!

Another sudden gasp escaped her mouth, and she turned to face me again, this time leaning closer, conspiratorially close.

“Guess who came up and started talking to me today?” she said. I could tell she was bursting with excitement to tell me.

I shook my head. How would I know?

“Trevon Malone,” she said, with emphasis on both his first and his last name.

I grimaced. “Trevon Malone? What did he want?”

She shrugged, raising her arms theatrically, and shook her head as if to say ‘Beats me!’ Trevon Malone, Tré for short (although everyone in school just called him Trey), was one of Eureka Springs Defenders’ quarterbacks. And as of yesterday, I've learned that that was the name of our school's football team. I heard it before, probably, but it didn't stick. Now, thanks to Wes, it was planted in my head firmly. Speaking of, Trey was Wes’s best friend, coincidentally, and the realization just hit me. Judging by Nia’s Cheshire cat expression, she knew that I made the connection, too. She made a show of returning to her lunch and dropping the subject, not very convincingly, though. I knew she was just playing coy. She wasn't going to give it to me this easily. She wanted me to actually open my mouth and ask her.

“Come on, Nee, spill! What did Trey want?” I asked, leaning closer. There was no way I was gonna not ask. Even to try to convince her that I didn't care about Wes. Which she wouldn't believe me. She only brought up Trey because she knew I was gonna be interested.

She grinned victoriously and looked at me sideways.

“Nothing,” she intoned, toying with me some more. “He was just asking if he could join our deco team for the prom, that’s all. Apparently, participating in prom decorations was all he ever dreamed of. I told him he could come if he wanted. It’s a free country. Who am I to stop him?” she said with a sassy tone, and then leaned closer and whispered earnestly, “Besides, we could really use an extra pair of hands. We're like majorly understaffed.” She learned back and took a sip of her apple juice. “He seemed really happy when I told him. Um . . . but let's see if he actually shows up.”

“Do you think—” I tried carefully, but Nia was already ahead of me.

“That it was Weston Brooks who asked him to ask me? Because it was he who actually wanted to come?”

I opened and closed my mouth several times trying to come up with something, but I had no idea what I wanted to say. Obviously, it would have been way too presumptuous of me to assume he did that. Yes, he said we had fun. But it was not like he was gonna join the deco team the very next day just because we had fun yesterday and he wanted to hang out with me today too. Would he? It would have been preposterous for him to actually ask Trey to ask Nia for them to come to our after-school deco team meetup, what—to see me?

Even if I allowed myself to believe it, the probability of it actually being the case was low. Extremely low, I would say. But not impossible. I exhaled deeply as Nia watched me with a grin.

I mean, I wanted to hang out with him more; I was thinking about him all day. But there was no way the feeling was mutual. My face contorted with a painful expression as I tried to dismiss the infinitesimal possibility of it happening mathematically. It wasn't zero, though. Nia continued watching me with extreme bemusement, sipping her juice and not commenting. I had to snap out of it. The chances were, Trey asking Nia to join our deco team had nothing to do with either Nia or me. The simplest explanation is usually true. The one requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be accurate. And we made a lot of assumptions just now, between me and Nia. Which meant we were probably deluding ourselves. Letting go of the idea of Wes wanting to see me was hard—the sweet fantasy—but it had to be done, in the name of science.

Nia could read my mind, it seemed, because she asked, “Exactly what happened between the two of you yesterday?”

“Nothing! We jogged, we worked on the assignment, we talked a little,” I said, truthfully. “Nothing . . .”

“You jogged?” Nia asked, incredulous.

“I jogged. I have two legs. I'm quite capable of jogging as far as physiology is concerned, all right?” I said, defensively.

“Sweetie, just because you have two legs doesn't mean that you're a jogger. If you ask me, you're not the jogging type.”

Her smile suddenly faded, and she looked at me seriously.

“So he got you to jog, dress up, and wear cologne, didn't he? You must have really liked him.”

So she noticed the cologne, huh? I lowered my gaze, unable to look at her.

“I liked him the regular amount,” I offered. “He's nice. We had fun. He said he liked spending time with me. I think I did too . . . It's all good.”

Nia smiled at me sadly. The verdict was in—I must have misread the signals, misread his friendliness for . . . what? Interest? Sympathy? Affection? Him feeling what I felt?

He was just a buddy-buddy guy who was congenial with everybody.

“You gotta be careful, Torrence,” Nia said. She reserved ‘Torrence’ for serious situations like this. I hung my head. My heart sank.

“I’m not saying he doesn't like you,” she hurried to explain. “I wasn't there, I don't know what happened. But even if he does, like you, you know. Even if he genuinely wants to be your . . . friend.”

She let the word ‘friend’ hang there as if it were a code for ‘more than a friend’.

“You still gotta be careful. They’re not like us, Tor. They’re a different kind of people.”

I looked up at her. I think she meant they were both rich, Trey and Wes. And in our town, there just as well could have been a line cutting it in two, so undeniable was the partition. And they were both from the rich part of town, and Nia and I were from the opposite. And even in my most deluded state, I couldn't have not agreed with her, not agreed that that was a problem.

It’d been like this for almost a decade now, ever since the Zenith factory shut down, back in 1992, Zenith having been the leading manufacturer of audio cassette tapes and portable cassette players in the nation. But due to the rise of digital audio technology, CDs and the invention of digital players, and the subsequent plummeting of analog tech sales, Zenith was forced to file for bankruptcy and shut down, having failed to keep up with the times. About half the town got laid off, mine and Nia's parents included, having gone from upper middle class to near poverty in a heartbeat. The crisis affected those who were already vulnerable the most, making them either leave town or stay and take minimum-wage jobs just to be able to feed their families. And the rich turned a blind eye to this, having survived the hard times on the buoyancy of their other investments. Truth be told, the crisis barely affected them at all, and this exaggerated the already well-pronounced polarization among the locals even further, drawing an invisible line between the “rich” and the “poor” parts of town.

“If you wanna be friends with him, it’s fine. But you gotta be careful, all right?” Nia said. “Promise me.”

That word again, ‘friend’. I nodded obediently, though I don't think I quite understood at the time the dangers of befriending someone like Weston Brooks. He seemed like such a sweet guy. As far as biology was concerned, we were all the same, rich or poor—just human. And I really wasn’t experienced with matters that went beyond that. Nia, on the other hand, a more experienced one of the bunch, could already see the trouble brewing.