Lake Thirteen Read Online Free PDF Page B

friends in the world. I’d always hated lying to them, pretending I had girlfriends who didn’t really exist, joking with Carson and Logan about how hot some women were—last summer on Sanibel I’d hated being dragged along with Logan when he went on the prowl for some, as he called it, summer lovin’ .
    I hadn’t told my friends at Farmington High School and wasn’t sure if I wanted to, honestly. I hated lying to them and would decide to tell everyone—and then would completely lose my nerve when I was around them. Mom and Dad didn’t even try to hide how relieved they were when I agreed to wait until college to come out. I didn’t like the idea of lying to everyone at school for another year, but I could deal with it if it made my parents feel better. What was another year?
    Besides, coming out at Farmington High really depended on what Marc wanted to do.
    Marc.
    Just thinking about Marc made me smile, the way it always did. Marc was the greatest, Marc was awesome, Marc was the sexiest hunk at school…but Marc also didn’t want anyone to know he was gay.
    The Kruegers lived a few houses down the street from us. Marc usually came over to my house, but every once in a while I had to go over to Marc’s, and I never felt comfortable there. I never had, in all the years I’d known Marc. His dad was always home, it seemed, with a beer in his hand. Mr. Krueger didn’t work—he’d gotten an enormous settlement from a work accident a few years before they’d moved to Farmington. Mrs. Krueger worked as the school secretary at the high school. Their television was always turned on to Fox News, and Mr. Krueger was always yelling about faggots and blacks and Mexicans and feminists and pretty much anything the television told him he was supposed to be angry about. One night when I was there and we were doing our geometry homework, he’d lurched into Marc’s bedroom, going on a lengthy tirade about how the whole country was going to hell because of communists and socialists and Nazis and the coloreds and…
    I’d felt sick to my stomach the rest of the night, only feeling better when Marc walked me to the front door when our homework was done and stole a quick kiss. I’d walked home on air.
    I was lucky to have Marc, even if Marc wasn’t ready to be as open as I wanted to be.
    Marc is perfect , I reflected as Logan maneuvered the big car out of the parking lot and headed down the winding mountain road.
    The Kruegers had moved down the street the summer before I started high school. Eighth grade had been rough for me—I’d started changing physically during the eighth grade, the pimples, my voice deepening, hair sprouting out where hair hadn’t been before—and that was also when I’d started noticing things I hadn’t noticed before. Things like my tennis coach’s strongly muscled hairy legs, for one, or Tommy Gargaro’s biceps and chest for another. The big family trip that summer had been to the Florida Gulf Coast, and I couldn’t stop stealing glances at Logan’s body on the beach, the way his skin turned golden brown from the sun, the golden hairs on his legs and forearms…I’d had some embarrassing dreams about Logan that trip, dreams where we ended up kissing on the beach and…
    Those dreams hadn’t stopped when the trip ended, either.
    But as soon as I saw Marc, it was like Logan had never existed.
    Marc was gorgeous. Logan was good looking, but Marc was maybe the best looking boy I’d ever seen in my life. If Logan was a nine, Marc was at least a twelve plus. Marc was better looking than most models and actors on television, and his body was just amazing.
    The first time I saw Marc was when I walked down the street to get a look at the family moving in. There were some movers in coveralls unloading the truck, but just as I reached their property the front door opened and a boy my age came out of the house. I caught my breath and just stared as the boy came down the front steps and walked toward