This week I've decided to introduce you to my friend - Jacob. I met Jacob almost two and a half years ago when I finished my first year at writing school. I fell in love with him instantly, and knew I wanted to tell his story.
This is the first chapter of the manuscript I've been working on the last few years. I hope you like it. Lucy X
Last week, I fell in love. Dad always told me that when it happens,
you just know. He also said it was unlikely to happen when you were eleven and
I should ‘relax’, so I guess he doesn’t know everything. Because I’m in love.
I’ve met the girl I want to spend the rest of my life with. My heart races when
she walks in the room. I go to sleep thinking about her and I dream about her
and when I wake up I jump out of bed because I know it’s nearly time to see
her.
But then I see her and get too
nervous to speak. My face goes red and my hands start to shake and I look away
because she’s cool and pretty and I’m boring and lame. Like on Wednesday Pap
tried to give me a kiss goodbye but I didn’t want her to see and I jumped out
of the car and didn’t even say goodbye to him. I’ll have to say sorry later.
Pap’s pretty sensitive. He says things like he ‘can’t sleep without a kiss and
a cuddle goodnight from his best boy’. I’ve told Pap I’m too old for him to
keep talking to me like that but he doesn’t listen. Pap’s getting pretty good
at ignoring all my requests lately. Like when I asked him not to wear sparkly
scarves to my parent/teacher night, or not to call Sally’s mum ‘darling’, or
not to wear too many of his ‘glam’ rings to my school concert. Dad’s different
than Pap, he’s more like a regular dad, but Pap can be totally embarrassing. He
talks high and gets squealy and excited sometimes.
I’d wanted to talk to Pap in the car
about my girl, but I didn’t know what to say. He doesn’t think I need to have a
girlfriend until I’m at least like, sixteen. But I can’t wait that long.
Someone might steal her from me.
Here’s what I know about love:
1. You
can love all different kinds of things. For example: I love my cat, Shaun. I
think he’s going to die soon, and I heard Dad and Pap talking about getting me
a puppy, which I would also love. If it’s a boy I think I’ll call him Dylan. If
it’s a girl (I hope it’s not a girl, but I will still love it if it is) I’ll
call it Carrie, after the girl from channel ten who reads the news.
2. You
can also love certain types of food, like chocolate and ice cream and you can
also hate different types of food like salmon and tomatoes. I love going to the
movies with Uncle Tristan and I love when Grandma comes to visit and brings me
a new video game. I love video games.
3. You
can love people in different kinds of ways. My dads are gay, so they hold hands
and kiss and stuff. My grandma and my auntie and uncle love me and I love them
too, but we don’t hold hands and kiss and pat each other’s bums when we walk
past.
4. You
can love someone you’ve never met. Like Carrie from the TV and my mum and
Poppy. They both died when I was a baby and never met them. Well, like I did
but I can’t remember. Mum died just after giving birth to me and Poppy died a
week later because he was hit by a car because the driver was drunk. My dads
say you should never drink and drive and it’s illegal and bad and I’ll never do
it. Pap said my parents loved me so much that’s why they asked him and
Dad to be my new family. Like, they wanted me to live in the best possible
house and have the best parents. Once when I was having a fight with Dad, I
told him that Mum would be angry at him for talking to me like that because she
trusted him with me and he got so upset he couldn’t look at me for the rest of
the day. Pap was really mad when he found out. I was grounded for a week and couldn’t
go to Sally’s and couldn’t play Xbox. I’ve never said anything like that again.
5. It’s
better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. (I don’t know what this
means, but when I asked Auntie Amy what she thought of love she told me that,
and like, she’s never been married or had kids so she probably doesn’t know
what it means either.)
That’s it. Not a lot but I’m only
eleven and I’m still learning about stuff. But I know enough to know I’m in
love.
I sat on the bench and waited for
Sally. Someone called out ‘homo’ as they walked past but I ignored it. I’m used
to it now. How stupid can some people be? Like, you can catch gay from being
around it?
I think I’m pretty lucky with my
dads. They let me watch whatever I want on TV and if I don’t eat all my dinner
I still get dessert. Sally only has a mum because her dad left. These kids with
their mum and dad and big brother and dog who think they have it all make me
sad. I saw this kid from school, Derek Coleman, at the supermarket. His dad hit
him over the head for knocking something over. It was an accident, and he hit
him. My dads only ever smacked me if I
said something really rude. And never over the head. And never since I went to
high school.
Sally’s car pulled up outside school
and I watched her kiss her mum goodbye and hop out of the car. Sally never
worries about what anyone thinks of her. I reckon that’s brave. I’d never be
that brave. She’s pretty too, like, she could be in a Kmart catalogue or
something. Some guy went up to her mum at the supermarket and told her.
Apparently he was a kid modeling agent, but it still freaked Sally’s mum out.
She does have nice hair though. It’s blonde and long and straight and mine’s
short and dark and a bit curly. She spotted me straight away and skipped over.
‘Sally, I saw her.’
‘Good morning, Jacob,’ she said,
rolling her big brown eyes at me. I didn’t care.
‘I saw her. She’s so
beautiful. I’m in love.’
Sally told me I was being stupid,
that you’re not allowed to love your teacher. But I can’t help it.
‘I’m going to tell her how I feel.’
‘Sure, Jacob. And what do you think
that’s going to achieve?’ Sally is always so logical. I think it’s because
she’s a year older than me. She reckons she’s smarter and sees things in black
and white, where as I see things in technicolor. I met Sally in third grade.
I’d skipped grade two and she was the only person who was nice to me. Everyone
else called me a show off. She’s the only one in the class who can beat me at
algebraic equations.
‘I don’t know. But I have to.’ ‘Do
you want to kiss her?’ ‘What? No way.’ ‘Do you want to date her?’ ‘Date her?
What does that even mean?’ ‘You know, go to the movies and stuff.’ ‘I don’t
think she’d be allowed to go to the movies with me. Would she?’
‘See?’ said Sally, enjoying my discomfort.
‘There is absolutely no point telling Miss Mackey that you love her.’
I hate the way Sally says ‘love’. All
sarcastic and stuff. Like I don’t know what it means.
‘You told Billy Black you loved him.’
‘Shut up,’ she spat. I’d broken our
golden rule – never talk about Billy Black.
Billy was in eighth grade, and was in Sally’s advanced science class.
She thought he touched her hand on purpose when they were dissecting a mouse.
Apparently, he was just trying to grab the knife back off her. But she didn’t
know this until after she wrote him a letter telling him how her heart
started beating really fast when she felt his hand on hers and after he
photocopied it and put it in everyone’s locker. Sally didn’t come back to
school for a week, until her mum busted her hiding out at the museum. Her mum
was really angry because she caught the bus to the city on her own and the
principal was really angry because she didn’t go to her classes when she was
supposed to and Sally got grounded and detention. She’d never been in
trouble before and she cried for hours. I did detention with her, because she
was so sad. And because detention was with Miss Mackey.
That was before I knew I loved her.
Back then I just knew like, I wanted to be around her.
I know Sally is right. Miss Mackey is
my teacher. I can’t be her boyfriend. But want to tell her, because I want to
know if she loves me too.
But I won’t write a letter. I learnt
from Sally’s mistake. Never say anything you can’t deny if you change your mind
or someone is teasing you. This is high school after all.
I decided I’d better apologise to
Sally, or she’d sulk all day, and I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to until PE.
Grade seven and eight are combined for PE and my neighbour, Sam, is in the
class. He doesn’t mind talking to me, even though I’m younger than him.
Sometimes I bug him when I talk too much about science or video games. He gets
bored and tries to talk about sport, but there’s only so much I know about
sport, so I get bored then and we have to try and find something else to talk
about. Sometimes, we don’t talk at all. We just walk home together, listening
to our iPods. People think Sam’s my brother, ‘cos he’s got short, dark, curly
hair too. He looks heaps older than me. He looks sixteen, at least. Pap said it’s
his ‘strong jaw’. I don’t have a strong jaw. I don’t have a strong anything.
I’m the smallest boy in my class. But that’s ‘cos I’m the youngest. I wasn’t
the smallest when I was in class with kids my own age. But at least I’m bigger
than Sally. She’s really tiny.
‘Sally, I’m sorry. Of course this is
a different situation and you are much smarter and more mature than me and I
was wrong and you were right. Please forgive me.’
Dad always says my mum was the queen
of sarcasm. She would say exactly what you wanted to hear while really saying
‘you’re a total twat’. I try this technique on Sally sometimes because she is
really smart at Math and Science but she only ever hears what she wants to
hear.
‘Of course I forgive you,’ she
shrugged. ‘We got time for a coffee before home room?’ ‘Got fifteen minutes.’
‘Perfect.’ And she linked her arm in mine and skipped me off to the canteen.
In case you’re worried, we don’t
really drink coffee in high school. It’s just what you say because ‘have we got
time for a warm milk with chocolate on top?’ sounds seriously lame. Sam plays
hockey with this kid from a private school who reckons they serve real coffee.
Sam reckons he’s full of it. You can’t serve kids coffee, even if their parents
are rich.
I’m lucky I’ve got Sally as my
friend. She says she likes hanging out with me more than the girls in her class
‘cos they always talk about lip gloss and boys and she couldn’t care less about
lip gloss or boys.
‘Hey, gayboy! Didn’t your mummy pack
your lunch today?’
Pap tells me the best thing to do
with boys like Derek Coleman is to ignore them. He says they only pick on me
because they’re jealous of what I have. But he always teases me about the
things I don’t have, like a mum too, so I’m not sure if Pap’s right.
‘Hey, Derek! Steal your dad’s jokes
again?’
Sally was a good mate; she always
came up with a comeback before I did.
‘Least I’ve got a dad,’ Derek
smirked. ‘Hey, why don’t you borrow one of gayboy’s?’
‘Why don’t you get a brain?’ I
mocked. Like I said, Sally was better with comebacks than me.
I’ve never actually been in a fight.
I’ve heard about them happening, but like, we never get three sentences in
before a teacher pops their head around the corner and breaks it up. Today it was Mr Morris, from the science
department. He likes me and Sally the best because we always stay back to help
clean up the lab. I know; it’s lame. But we get As, and we don’t want that to
change.
‘Alright, what’s going on here?’
I panicked. I hate getting in
trouble. I used to get in trouble in primary school for climbing the fence to
get the ball back but I hit it over and I’d get yelled at by the other kids if
I didn’t get it back so I couldn’t win. The principal told me to be careful,
getting in trouble was much worse in high school.
‘Jacob was calling me dumb,’ Derek
blurted out.
‘Only because you called him GAYBOY,’
Sally spat back.
‘Alright, that’s enough. Derek is
that true?’
‘That he called me dumb?’
‘Derek…’
‘Yes, Sir,’ he answered, kicking his
heel into the carpet.
‘I’ll see you in my office at lunch
thanks, Derek. Off you go now.’
Derek muttered under his breath and
stormed off. We’ll see him again after recess anyway, he’s in Miss Mackey’s
religion class with us. But he never plays up in front of Miss Mackey. Come to
think of it, no one plays up in Miss Mackey’s class.
‘You all right, Jacob?’ he asked me.
I nodded. I actually hate when
teachers ask me if I’m okay. They treat me like I’m a baby and I’ll cry if
anyone says something mean about my gay dads. But I’ve never cried. I don’t
feel sorry for myself. And I wish no one else did. But I was really glad I
wasn’t in trouble.
I felt sorry for myself once. I was
in fourth grade, and we’d just been taught about homosexuality in Life Ed. They
brought someone from outside the school to talk to us about it, like it was too
full on for any of the existing schoolteachers to handle. But they’d obviously
not told this lady about my family, and she was a bit of an idiot. Seriously,
if she was the ‘specialist’ on this topic, I’d hate to see her working in
another profession, like medicine. She’d probably kill everyone.
The class was awful, everyone was
making pointed questions at my expense and she just kept answering them, not
realising they were all winding her - and me - up. Eventually, I just walked
out of the classroom and out of school. But I didn’t go home. I waited next
door for Sam.
Sam was good to talk to. He just let
me sulk about it all, how sometimes I wished I had a normal family. When I was
done whingeing a good hour later, he asked me the best question anyone has ever
asked me:
‘You wanna go live somewhere else?’
And
I didn’t.
