Beyond Clueless

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Alsenas, Linas.

  Beyond clueless / by Linas Alsenas.

  pages cm

  Summary: Fourteen-year-old Marty Sullivan attends an all-girl Catholic high school while her best friend, Jimmy, goes to public school in a different town and when he comes out of the closet, he finds a new group of friends while Marty finds connections—and also confusion and uncertainty—through her school’s fall musical.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-1496-2 (hardback)

  [1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Catholic schools—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Gays—Fiction. 6. Coming out (sexual orientation)—Fiction. 7. Theater—Fiction. 8. Musicals—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.A46264Bey 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015005780

  Text copyright © 2015 Linas Alsenas

  Book design by Alyssa Nassner

  Act I Opening – Part 1

  Hello Little Girl

  I Know Things Now

  Your Fault

  from INTO THE WOODS

  Words and Music by Stephen Sondheim

  © 1988 RILTING MUSIC, INC.

  All Rights Administered by WB MUSIC CORP.

  All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

  Reprinted with Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

  Published in 2015 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

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  FOR BERT

  CONTENTS

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Martha. Wake up!”

  My eyelids pressed down hard onto my eyeballs, feeling like lead blankets at an X-ray. Slowly I managed to pry the lids open.

  Derek’s face, full of concern, hovered above me.

  “Wh-wh-what’s—” I stammered.

  He shushed me. “It’s OK, it’s OK. You fainted.”

  I was having trouble focusing. Fainted . . . fainted. Me? I fainted?

  Inside my skull, it felt like my brain was expanding, pushing against my ears in the same rhythm as my heartbeat. I turned my head left to look around the room, and—

  Urinals?

  Reality came rushing back at me, at full force. I suddenly understood that my head was resting on the gross tile floor of the men’s bathroom. I gasped, struggling for air, despite the sharp smell of disinfectant. About two feet away from my face was a moist clump of dust, dirt, and hair that shivered with my every breath.

  Eww.

  Do not hurl, Marty. Do not hurl . . . again.

  I turned back to look at the ceiling. Then I slowly became aware that I was crying, makeup streaking across my face and pooling in my ears.

  Basically, I was a hot mess.

  It wasn’t just the throwing up and the fainting. In the past half hour I had literally stumbled across a series of insane surprises that still sent my brain into a tailspin.

  Ohhh. Oh, yes. It was all coming back to me now. And all my friends hated me.

  I think it’s pretty safe to say that this, this moment here, was a truly low point for me. And on this, the most terrible day of my life, I just could not understand: How had I ever gotten here?

  What had I ever done to deserve all this?

  Well, for the sake of context, I guess the most logical place to start is at the very, very beginning, four years ago, at Chippewa Elementary, where I met Jimmy Caradonna in fifth-grade phys ed. There are three different classes within the grade, but they had to combine two classes at a time for phys ed because the gym was also the cafeteria, and there weren’t enough periods in the day to let every class in the school have its own gym period.

  So, imagine fifty eleven-year-olds going nuts playing kickball. Horrific, isn’t it? Well, at least that’s how Jimmy and I felt about it, and for some reason we were the only ones who did. Everyone else thought kickball was God’s greatest gift to humanity. I kid you not, there would be rumors about whether we’d play kickball later in the day. And if we ended up doing ring toss or relays or whatever instead, kids would actually get their parents to call the school to complain. I’m not lying. Really.

  OK, so there’s me and Jimmy, trying to lie as low as possible while our classmates worked out whatever deep-seated aggressions they had on a purple rubber ball. We were always picked last, of course—not because we were the worst athletes, but because the team captains were always afraid that our attitudes would infect the rest of the teams’ spirit and, therefore, oh, my God, cause them to lose.

  But since we were always the last ones picked, Jimmy and I were never on the same team. We had never spoken to each other before—Jimmy had moved to Bracksville from Michigan at the beginning of the year—but as the only Kickball Infidels, we obviously each knew who the other was. He was the skinny kid with short black hair and really blue eyes, and I was the blond dork who was obsessed with musicals, especially Rent and Assassins at the time.

  But after all the fifth graders were required to learn the American Sign Language alphabet during Difficulty Appreciation Week, Jimmy and I started commiserating across the kickball diamond by sneaking hand gestures. When one of the team captains caught on to what we were doing, she complained to the teacher that we were plotting to ruin the game. Then Jimmy communicated his feelings toward the captain in a different kind of sign language—and got us both sent to the principal’s office.

  We’ve been inseparable ever since.

  Well, sort of. Until a few months ago. Which, by the way, was after four blissful years of best-friendship. Dozens of slumber parties, hundreds of nicknames, and thousands of inside jokes later, Jimmy, like all normal human beings in Bracksville, started school at Bracksville High. I, on the other hand, was shipped off to Our Lady of the Oaks School for Girls. Yup: Oaks. Girls. Our Lady of. No, this is not 1953, as the name might suggest, but the school definitely still thinks it is.

  You see, my family is Catholic, and my parents both went to Catholic schools, so they “firmly believe, based on experience, that a single-sex high school education in a Catholic setting is the most fertile ground for a budding intellect that [they] can provide.” Did you get that? Single-sex. Fertile budding. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to submit to the malicious will of two religious zealots without a struggle. But after a number o
f shrieking fights, two hunger strikes, and more than a few calls to Social Services later, I was forced to accept the tragic reality that every fourteen-year-old in this land of so-called freedom has, in fact, none. I was going to Our Lady of the Oaks, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  So the end of last year was a time of tearful good-byes, hysterically scribbled yearbook notes, and desperate promises to keep in touch. OK, maybe I took it a little far—most people assumed I was getting shipped off to a Romanian orphanage or something. But the pain of separation was real: I was like a monarch butterfly about to be pinned to a musty old corkboard. A musty old corkboard called Our Lady of the Freakin’ Oaks.

  Let me give you a visual, just so you understand the true depths of my suffering. To get to Our Lady from Bracksville, you have to drive twenty-five minutes in the opposite direction of the city. Mind you, Bracksville is already a thirty-minute commute to Cleveland—you do the math. The school itself is on about two acres in the middle of millions of acres of corn. Not the pretty rolling hills of corn on the labels of vegetable shortening, but the flat, dry, cricket-ridden cornfields of Ohio. Field of dreams this was not. In fact, when the school was built in the mid-1950s in that oh-so-pretty style of beige brick and turquoise metal panels, they realized how sadly ironic Our Lady of the Oaks would be without any trees. So they planted about fifty oaks around the lot. Thanks to some fungus that causes “oak wilt,” there is now one remaining oak that gets sprayed down with DDT (or something equally deadly) once a week by Sister Joan. And, thanks to the fact that it’s the tallest thing around for miles, it has become the county lightning rod, which means there are only about seven leaves left on the poor thing.

  This is where my parents believed I would find fertile ground.

  OK, so maybe there is one redeeming thing about the school. About ten years ago, one of its alumnae died and left a ton of money to the school—her family fortune had come from a certain well-known floor wax. She had earmarked the money to be used for a theater, which would be named after her, Maureen Jerry. The amount of money she left was clearly more than the school had ever seen, because Jerry Hall is by far the nicest part of campus. (Completely coincidentally, Jerry Hall is also the name of rocker Mick Jagger’s second wife.)

  The building is actually kind of amazing. It has fly space for at least ten different backdrops (who would ever need more than five in any one show?), and the stage is forty feet across and fifty feet deep—with, like, sixteen trapdoors! Also, the dressing room has a snack machine with Twix bars.

  Speaking. Of. Which. I love Twix bars. I mean, I am completely obsessed with them. If the Mars candy company ever needs someone to pledge their eternal, undying love for them in a commercial, I am so there. Twix bars are truly—oh, words fail me—ambrosia from the gods! Manna from the heavens! I’ve already written Mars, Inc., more than a few letters over the years, volunteering my services, but still, if you ever hear they are looking for someone . . .

  Sorry, I’m getting way off track. Where was I? Oh, yeah, so Jimmy’s settling into life at Bracksville, while I’m in rural exile. We made a pact that we would see each other at least every other day, no matter what. That lasted about five minutes after school began, until we realized how much work high school was going to be. Don’t get me started on the crazy craploads of homework I get at Our Dear Lady. I swear to God I’m going to die from sleep deprivation, and still we’re supposed to be involved in every extracurricular activity under the sun or we won’t get into college and we’ll end up living with our parents and working at Pizza Hut for fifteen years until we finally drink a bottle of bleach to end the misery into which our lives have devolved. But I said I wouldn’t get started, so I won’t.

  Anyway, our weekends became that much more important.

  Then Jimmy met Derek.

  The End.

  Fine, yes, there’s a lot more to it than that; still, it was the end of an era.

  One day, only a few days after school began, Jimmy called me up, all serious, saying, “We have to talk. You need to come over.” This was very un-Jimmy-like speech. Normally, every conversation with him starts off with a scream—like, a happy scream. Then we proceed to the salutation, which usually involves calling the other person a fetching vegetable or fruit, like “you ravishing radish” or “my saucy persimmon.” So this was bad. Real bad.

  Of course, I immediately assumed that he had brain cancer. Or, worse, that he was moving back to Michigan.

  I threw on a hoodie and headed over to Jimmy’s house. He lives on Cottonwood Drive, and I live on Iroquois Trail, both of which are cul-de-sac streets in their own developments. In sixth grade, there was this one day when we were playing with his dad’s iPad. We tagged our houses on a satellite overview of the area. Seriously, it was like fireworks went off in our brains. We lived way closer than we’d ever realized! The forest behind my house was the same one that was behind his; we just had to work out a trail, using the iPad and a roll of pink ribbon, tying bows on trees along the way. So, instead of a twenty-minute-long bike ride, it was just a ten-minute hike through the woods. Best day ever.

  On the serious-conversation day, however, the ribbons had long since faded to gray. But whatever, even if they had fallen off, it’s not like I didn’t know the trail without them, and I arrived at Jimmy’s house in no time. He led me up to his room, all ashen and nervous, and made me sit on his bed.

  “Here, take this,” he said, handing me a Twix bar. You know, like I’m some sort of zoo animal. Here, little monkey, take the pretty candy! Obviously I didn’t open it. I was afraid it contained sedatives or something. This was all very freaky. Freaky, freaky, freaky.

  “Martha,” he said, “I have something to tell you. About me. It’s . . . it’s rather personal.”

  And apparently “rather” formal, I thought. This whole time, Jimmy was sweating like he was doing downward-facing dog in Bikram Yoga or something. I started developing a new theory that maybe it wasn’t cancer. Maybe, instead, Jimmy’s chest would open up, and an alien baby would spring out to attack me. I fingered the strap on my book bag. Bring it on, little alien.

  “I’m . . . well, I think I’m . . .” Big pause.

  “Yeeesss?”

  “I’m . . .”

  An alien? A cannibal? Ryan Gosling’s love child?

  “Holy bejeezus, Jimmy, what the hell?”

  He winced. “OK, OK, hold on—I need a drink.”

  He got up and grabbed an iced tea from his mini-fridge. He kept one eye trained on me as his Adam’s apple bobbed with every gulp. I twisted a lock of blond hair, wrapping it around the end of my index finger.

  Finally, Jimmy regained some shred of composure, but of course by now it was clear that this announcement involved some kind of family drama. His parents were divorcing? Something with his little sister? Jimmy and I were pretty much never serious about anything, so I wasn’t sure how to handle a conversation like that.

  My finger pulsed, and I realized I had wrapped my hair around it way too tightly.

  Jimmy opened and closed his mouth a few times—false starts.

  Then suddenly he spat out,

  “Imetsomeone.

  “IthinkmaybeImaylikethissomeone.

  “Thissomeoneisaguy.

  “I’mnotsurebutIthinkImightbegay.”

  Uh, excuse me? I stared at him. Did I hear that right? Did he just say he thinks he’s gay?

  Jimmy stared back at me, those blue eyes looking like Bambi’s watching his mother die.

  “Uh . . . and?” I said.

  Jimmy’s shoulders slumped. “What do you mean, ‘and’? I just told you I’m gay.”

  “Well, of course you are. I’ve figured that since we were about ten.”

  “But now it’s true.”

  “I know!” What was I supposed to say? “Oh, my God! I had no idea”? But for some reason, Jimmy was getting mad.

  “What do you mean, you know? How could you possibly know? You’re not me!”

&n
bsp; “Jimmy, you’re the gayest kid I know. I mean, take a look around you: This isn’t exactly butch.” His eyes scanned the vintage fringed lampshade, the wall color he’d spent weeks trying to decide on (“Verona Green”), and the framed One Direction poster (the original five) over his bed.

  “I . . . like baseball!” he countered, which merely got a snort-chuckle in response. “Anyway, that’s not the point,” he continued. “We’re friends, and you were supposed to believe me when I told you before that I didn’t know if I was gay. You don’t just draw your own conclusions and then pretend to believe me!”

  Oh, great. Now he was in full self-righteous-indignation mode.

  “So I’m supposed to completely ignore reality?” I asked. “Last time I checked, friendship is not the same thing as forced stupidity.”

  “No, but while you were checking, did it say friendship meant lying?”

  “I was not lying.”

  “You were totally lying!”

  “Well, so were you!”

  “I was not.”

  “Oh, please, everyone always knew you were gay. Including you, princess.”

  We glared at each other for a full five seconds.

  “Homophobe,” he said.

  I snorted in response. “Delusional freak.”

  Another glare. But then, ten seconds later, I couldn’t help it: I started to crack a smile. Then it broadened. Jimmy’s glare held out for another few seconds, but then we both started giggling, erupting finally into a release of laughter. I don’t know what it is about the two of us, but just looking at each other makes us lose our shit. That’s usually all it takes, and something clicks, and we’re back to normal.

  “Come on, Jimmy, don’t make me laugh this hard. Now I have to go pee. But when I come back, I want the full report on this mysterious new stranger recruiting you to be a homosexual.”

  Jimmy threw a pillow at me, but I’d already closed the door behind me.

  So it turns out that with the start of a new academic year at a new school, our little Jimmy had decided it was time for some self-discovery. He took the bus into the city to check out a certain notorious gay hot spot in University Circle. I mean, this little café is actually pretty unremarkable: It has fluorescent-colored walls painted in a flower-power motif, a few comfy flea-market couches, a collection of mismatched metal, plastic, and wooden tables and chairs. But it was known for being gay-friendly, so from the way people would talk about it, you’d imagine it was Sodom and Gomorrah, or Amsterdam’s red-light district, or, I dunno, some sort of sex-crazed fever dream.