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We faced each other down. Will’s finger had wandered into his mouth again. Procrastinator. Ms. Hurstenwild was going to genuinely murder me.

I closed my locker and started walking backward. “Look, Will, if you don’t have anything to—”

At that moment, two things happened.

A little farther down the hall, a door opened, and a student stepped halfway out of the classroom. Only the back of the head was visible—the student had paused to speak to the teacher on the way out—but the close-trimmed Afro and black-and-white letterman jacket looked a lot like it belonged to Will’s friend Matt.

Lo and behold, I was right on the money with that one. With a small yelp, Will lunged forward, opened a nearby door, and shoved me into the room.

Before I could get my bearings, Will had joined me and slammed the door closed, plunging us into darkness.I tried to back away and stepped right into what felt like a mop bucket. Or at least, itwasa mop bucket, I figured from the crunch of snapping plastic. I shot a hand out to steady myself and smacked straight into a shelf of some sort. A bunch of unidentified items clattered onto the concrete floor—and onto my feet. I swore in pain as a particularly heavy bottle all but shattered my toes. Motherfucker.

“Jesus Christ, Ollie, hold still,” Will’s voice hissed through the darkness.

“What are youdoing? Is this an assault? Should I scream?”

“I didn’t want Matt to see us.”

“Ah. Getting rid of witnesses. So itisan assault?”

“Come on, Ollie, be serious.”

I kind of was, to be honest. “And why does it matter if Matt sees us?”

Even though I couldn’t see a thing, my third eye clearly made out some cuticle-chewing action. “Do you have to ask?”

And what the hell was that supposed to mean? “Uh, given that I did ask… yes?”

A long pause. Long pauses are never good. One day, I would write a thesis on the history of long pauses, and the hurt feelings that followed them 200 percent of the time. This wasjustlike the time in tenth grade, when I shaved one side of my head and asked Ryan how it looked at school the next day. Except this long pause was lasting longer, and oh God, this was going to really stab, wasn’t it? Fuck long pauses. Motion to ban them from social interactions, please.

“Well… you know…”

Nope. But I was about to, wasn’t I?

“Like… most of the school has figured out you’re gay.”

“Oh. Interesting. I haven’t met most of the school, so don’t know how they managed that.”

“Yeah, but…”

I knew what he was getting at. It was fine. Whatever. It’s not like it was a state secret or anything. And hey, if people guessed, it saved me having to have a discussion about my sexual preferences with people who didn’t even know if I preferred ham or peanut butter on my sandwiches. For reference, the answer was, “both, simultaneously.”

“And so what?” I asked. “So what if they know I’m gay? Why, exactly, does that mean you can’t be seen with me? Am I contagious? Because I guess that’d explain a lot.” As far as explanations went, that’d win an award for creativity.Sorry, I stopped texting you because my precise strain of “gay” was only temporary. Kind of like salmonella.

Will’s sigh was particularly loud and scathing in the small space. Claustrophobia does that. “The guys are being dicks about it. It’s like a running joke. They keep trying to ‘set each other up’ with you at lunch.”

Well. I’d like to say that after years of being out and coming to terms with myself, and homophobia, and the rest of it all, that I’d be able to brush that one off. But it hurt. It always hurt a little, at least, to know people were talking about you in a less than flattering way. Being so new at the school, though, and people already having an opinion about me? AndWillbeing involved in it? Had he even tried to defend me? Or had he laughed along with them?

“Uh-huh.” My tone was flat.

“I don’t join in,” he added quickly.

But do you stop them?

Suddenly, I laughed. It spilled like blood from a fresh wound. Out and out and out.

“What’s so funny?”

“We’re in a closet.”