The Difference Between You and Me(7)
“I am so devastated. I’m totally devastated not to be there with you on Saturday. I have, like, three great new knock-knocks all ready to go!”
“What were you doing hiding in the bathroom anyway? That’s amateur stuff—you know how Snediker is with bathroom sweeps.”
“No, I know, it’s so dumb, I wasn’t supposed to be in there, or I was, but I was only supposed to be in there for a second. I just—something happened and I got distracted.”
Jesse wishes—so much wishes—she could tell Wyatt about the encounter with Emily today. For almost a year now she’s been managing to keep Emily a secret. Wyatt doesn’t even know she exists. It’s been excruciating—almost impossible—concealing this huge part of her life, but it seems even more impossible to start telling him about it now. How would she even bring it up? It’s been going on for so long and it’s so terrible, what Jesse’s agreed to. There’s no way Wyatt would let it continue if he knew.
“Oh, something happened?” Wyatt is sympathetic. “Something digestive?”
“Ew, no!” Jesse cries. “Gross! I just, it’s so dumb, I had masking tape in my bag and I was trying to get it out so I could put up my manifestos during the pep rally and I couldn’t find it and then the bell rang and I was stuck there. That’s all that happened.”
Wyatt groans. “Not the manifestos! That’s why you got thrown in jail, for those ridiculous manifestos? Beloved, when are you going to figure out that this little art project of yours is a colossal waste of time?”
Jesse breathes, wills herself to stay calm. This is the biggest point of contention between them. If she had been thinking straight, she would have made up a totally different story about getting busted and avoided having to discuss this with Wyatt for eight millionth time. But she was not thinking straight. She was distracted by making up a story about being distracted by something other than Emily Miller.
“Okay, first of all,” Jesse says, forcing herself to stay cool, “they are not a ‘little art project.’ They are a series of serious political wake-up calls that I post around school because I’m trying to change things there and make the world a safer place for weirdos like you and me.”
“I’m not—” Wyatt starts, but Jesse cuts him off.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re not a weirdo, I know, and second of all, not that I want to miss our Howard date, I totally don’t, but I do actually think it’s worth getting thrown in jail for a cause you believe is important.”
“Mm-hm,” Wyatt murmurs. “Have you even started The Fountainhead yet?”
“I told you I’m not going to read that book. What is the matter with you that your idol is Ayn Rand, why can’t you worship Cher or Judy Garland like any normal gay boy?”
“Because I don’t have a low opinion of myself,” Wyatt says breezily, and barrels on. “If you would read the book like I’ve asked you to politely, you would understand where you’re going wrong. Miss Rand teaches us that egoism is the highest form of enlightenment. Trying to help other people is a twisted form of condescension, it makes people into dependent babies. And anyway, practically no one is smart enough to understand a ‘serious political wake-up call’ when they get one. The masses want to stay ignorant. And those masses? In that school? I’ve never seen a group of idiots so profoundly idiotic and so determined to stay that way. Why do you think I had to leave?”
“Because you couldn’t get Rob Strong to stop tormenting you.”
“Partly.” From seventh grade until the beginning of last year, Wyatt was engaged in a long, slow, torturous war with Rob Strong, varsity wide receiver and king of auto shop. Something about Wyatt—his delicacy, his highly unusual outfits, the frustrating way he showed no fear even when he was about to get pounded—made Rob want to exterminate him. Eventually, it became clear that no amount of adult intervention was going to change their dynamic, and since neither Snediker nor Mr. Greil, the principal, was able to control Rob, Wyatt’s mom gave into Wyatt’s lifelong wish to be emancipated from school and pulled him, right at the beginning of ninth grade.
A lot of things had been changing in Jesse’s world when Wyatt left. Her mother had just started cancer treatments, and Jesse was spending more time alone at home. And with Wyatt gone at school, she was alone a lot there, too. Since seventh grade, she had had almost all her classes with Wyatt. They had walked to school together almost every morning and hung out almost every afternoon. When Wyatt’s mom took him out, it felt to Jesse like Wyatt had been her clothes, in a way, and now that he was gone she was walking around naked, exposed and alone in the halls of school.