Geography Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

workers sauntered inside.
    They were a good thirty feet away from our table—they were up at the counter trying to decide on a pizza—but we all stopped talking anyway.
    Finally, Terese looked down at her watch and said, “Damn! It’s after six.” We’d been there for three hours. It had seemed like about five minutes.
    No one moved. We all just stared down at the wadded napkins on the empty pizza pans. I think we all knew it was time to head home, but no one wanted to let the moment end.
    “I wish we could stay,” Min said.
    “Yeah,” Kevin said.
    “This so sucks,” Terese said.
    There was another pause. Then Ike said, “It doesn’t have to. Suck, I mean.”
    We all looked at him.
    “I mean, why couldn’t we meet again tomorrow? At school? We could eat lunch together.”
    It took a second for the idea to sink in.
    “Why not?” I said.
    “Sounds good!” Min said.
    “I’m in!” Terese said.
    Once we’d decided this, it made it a hell of a lot easier to leave. After all, it’s not like the conversation was over. We were just suspending it for a while.
    We all walked out to our cars and bikes, and then spent another forty minutes or so standing around talking some more. However much we said to each other, there always seemed to be more to say. And no matter what anyone said, it seemed like everyone else understood it perfectly. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was always the way it felt around good friends when you don’t have to hide who you are.
    That’s when I remembered the beginning of the meal, and how it had seemed like we were all waiting for some really interesting and important thing to happen. Now I knew that it had happened after all.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    “You like him,” Min said to me a few minutes later, after we’d thrown my bike into the back of her parents’ Honda, and she was driving me home.
    “What?” I said uneasily. “Who?”
    “Russel, please,” Min said. “Kevin. You like Kevin.”
    “I do not!” I was shocked and appalled by the suggestion. I was also stunned that Min had picked up on it so quickly. What had given me away?
    “No?” Min said.
    “No!” I said.
    “Well, you have to admit he’s hot.”
    “No, I don’t!”
    Min looked over at me from the driver’s seat. “Oh, Russel, come on. He is hot. Bisexual, remember?”
    Something told me that wouldn’t be the first time I’d hear those words.
    “So?” she said.
    “So what?” I said.
    “So don’t you think he’s hot?”
    “I already told you. No.”
    Min slowly shook her head. “That is so sad. You can’t even admit when a guy’s hot. And when we were all being so honest back there at the pizza place.”
    “Okay!” I said.
    “Okay, what?”
    “What you said.”
    Min smiled. “So say it.”
    “Say what?”
    “Say you think Kevin Land is hot.”
    “Min!”
    “What’s the big deal? Why can’t you say it?”
    “Okay, I think Kevin Land is hot! Happy?”
    She slapped the dashboard in victory. “ Ha! I knew it! I knew you liked him!”
    Like I said, Min liked to win. This was another example of that. But she hadn’t won yet. I could still change the subject.
    “ Three years? ” I said. “You’ve been with Terese for three years , and you never bothered to tell me?”
    Now it was Min’s turn to blush. “It wasn’t like that,” she said. “We met at Girl Scout camp. At first, it was just this weird inseparable/infatuation thing, except I didn’t know it was infatuation. The sex didn’t come until later on.” Sex, I thought. There was that word again.
    “But she had her friends, and I had mine,” Min went on. “They didn’t really mix. So we never told anyone. Not just that we’re together. Not even that we’re friends. We meet in this old warehouse down on Fracton. All these years, my parents think I’ve been doing volunteer work down at the YMCA. Twisted is what it is. Really sick and neurotic and twisted.” She looked over at me again and scrunched up her