"Uh," I said at last. "Hi."

"Something wrong?" Declan McDonnell said.

72 I grimaced. "It's just that they . . ."

"Ah, right. You're not supposed to talk to the stars. The first movie I did, I didn't know that they always tell the crew and the extras that. I just thought everyone was being stuck up." Declan McDonnell's voice rang in the soaring cathedral that was this particular men's room.

But right then, I noticed that Declan McDonnell had forgotten to zip his zipper. (It is not that I was looking at his crotch! It's just that I'm observant, remember? His underwear was black, if you must know.) "Um," I said. "You . . ." I nodded at his crotch but was careful not to stare.

"Huh?" he said. He looked down. "Oh! Thanks! Sorry." He zipped up.

Seeing Declan McDonnell up close was strange. I'd never seen any face so perfect. It was nice, but it was also a little off-putting. It was like being in the presence of an angel (despite the previously unzipped fly).

"Don't you have your own bathrooms?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Yeah. Sometimes I just need to get away. But I should get back to the set."

"Right," I said. I nodded to the urinals. "And I should, well, pee. Hey, do you think you. . . ?"

But when I turned back to look at him, he was gone, just like an angel having flown right back up to heaven.

73.

I left that bathroom in a daze. It all seemed so unreal. I had actually talked to Declan McDonnell! I spent the rest of the day avoiding Kevin and, yes, looking for Declan again. It was a disorienting experience, made even worse by the fact that I never did see Declan, but I kept spotting Kevin everywhere I turned.

We worked until six that night. It was a long day, but it's not like I particularly wanted to go home to parents who thought I was "disgusting." I wasn't even annoyed when Gunnar and Em wanted to stay late to watch the cinematographer clean the camera lens.

I went out to wait for them in the parking lot. It was already dark, which meant I'd spent the whole day indoors, but it was somehow comforting too, like the whole world had pulled up the covers. The fresh air was nice, especially after so much time inside.

The hood of one of the cars in the parking lot was standing open. Somehow I knew exactly who I'd find under that hood.

Sure enough, Kevin poked his head out.

"Russel!" he said, smiling.

"Kevin," I said. It was too late now to pretend I hadn't seen him, so I walked closer.

"Dead battery," he said, nodding to his car. "Left my 74 lights on this morning."

"That sucks. You have jumper cables?"

He nodded and held up two ends, one red and one black. "You know how to hook them up?" I asked. "Oh, sure," he said. This figured. Kevin was just that butch.

"Gunnar'll be out in a sec," I said. "I'm sure he'll give you a jump."

"Yeah, I was waiting for you guys." We stood there for a minute, not talking, sort of facing in different directions.

Then Kevin said, "So I guess you heard about me, huh?" Kevin meant about his coming out. And of course I'd heard. It was all anyone had been talking about all week. "Yeah," I said. "That's really great. Congratulations." "You didn't think I'd really do it, did you?" He sounded a little proud, which was okay, because he'd done something to be proud of.

"No," I admitted. "I guess not." But I didn't want to talk about this. After all, I'd told him before that the reason we couldn't be together was because I was out and he wasn't.

Now that had changed.

"It's hard though," Kevin said. "People can sure be a.s.sholes. Thing like this shows you who your friends really are."

It was only then that I noticed that Kevin had a black 75 eye. The skin under his eye was a purple wash even in the wan overhead light of that parking lot. At first I thought it might be makeup from the shoot, but it looked far too real.

Kevin had been in a fight with someone, no doubt over his coming out. I wondered who. One of the other jocks? His dad?

Suddenly I wanted to comfort him with a hug. He wasn't my boyfriend anymore, but he was still a friend. And didn't friends hug each other when one of them was in pain? I didn't want to be one of the friends that Kevin was talking about, the kind of person who abandoned someone when things got rough.

"Your eye," I said. "Are you okay?"

He looked up at me. "What? Oh, sure. It's nothing." There was a smudge of oil on his cheek, just below the black eye. It was indescribably cute. Which made me realize that I didn't want to just hug him. I wanted to hold him, and more, like I had before, back when we were boyfriends.

Then I remembered Otto.

I had a boyfriend! I had told Kevin this. If he had thought that by coming out he was going to change every 76 thing, well, he'd been wrong. Nothing was different.

I decided to change the subject. "So how do you jump a car anyway? I can never remember."

Kevin stared at me a second. Then he grinned (impishly, natch). "It's easy. Come here, I'll show you. You have to make sure you do it right, or the battery can explode."

I took a step closer to the engine but still held back. I'd like to say I was worried about the battery exploding, but I was really more afraid of getting too close to Kevin.

"You start with both cars turned off," Kevin said. "Then you connect the positive cable-that's the red one-to the positive terminal on the dead battery. See, it's marked with a little plus sign?"

I had to shuffle closer to the engine to see what Kevin was talking about. I was standing right next to him now, so close I could actually feel his body heat. I felt like a satellite reentering the earth's atmosphere.

"Okay," Kevin said, "then you connect the other positive end to the positive terminal of the good battery." Since we didn't have a second car, he had to pantomime this part. "Next you take the negative end-the black one-and connect it to the negative side of the bad battery." Kevin did this too. As he worked, I noticed that he had more black grease on his hands. "Finally, you connect the other nega77 tive end to the last terminal of the good battery." This close to him, I could smell Kevin too. It had only been eight months, but I'd already forgotten his complicated mixture of scents: dollar soap, leather from his baseball mitt, and fresh-cut gra.s.s.

He turned to face me. "Then you just start the cars." I turned to face him. Our lips were only inches apart. "Start the cars?" I said, my mouth bone-dry.

"Live car first," he said softly, almost a whisper. "And let it run for a few minutes. Then you can start the dead car." I wasn't listening. If I ever found myself with a dead battery, I still wouldn't have any idea what to do. But I did know one thing. Being so close to Kevin was jump-starting my heart. I could feel the sizzle of his electricity right in front of me, could hear it crackling.

No! I thought. I loved Otto!

But Otto lived eight hundred miles away. For months he'd been nothing more than flashing blips on a computer screen.

Kevin leaned forward. He was definitely no mere flashing blip. No, he was flesh and blood, and more. His lips touched mine. The electricity surged between us. But we must have been doing something wrong, 78 because it felt like my head was exploding.

This was totally unacceptable! I had made it very clear to him that he and I couldn't be together! (Except that that had all changed when he came out.) But Kevin was kissing me. And the embarra.s.sing, totally honest truth is that, yeah, I think maybe I was kissing him back.

CHAPTER SIX.

"Russ?" a voice said.

It was Gunnar, standing with Em behind me in the parking lot. 79 I immediately jerked back from Kevin.

"Kevin needs a jump!" I said loudly.

"Yeah," Em said wryly. "And I can see you were giving him one." It was a really funny joke, but none of us laughed, not even a little. I think it was because the situation was just so unbelievably not-funny.

Gunnar moved his car closer, so we could get Kevin's running again. Kevin worked in complete silence. I watched it all from one side, unable to move or talk. It was the closest I'd ever come to having an out-of-body experience.

As Kevin backed his car away, he leaned out the window and said to me with a wink, "See you tomorrow."

I didn't answer, but I felt myself sort of wave. I caught a glimpse of something on the back of my hand. He'd left a grease mark on my skin, and no matter how I rubbed it, it wouldn't come off.

Oh, G.o.d, did I feel guilty.

"I can't believe I just did that!" I said to Gunnar and Em, once we were in the car and driving away. "Calm down," Em said. "Tell us what happened." I explained everything that had gone on. I told Em the 80 stuff about Kevin's coming out, since she hadn't heard that part before.

"I bet Kevin left his headlights on on purpose," she said.

"That dog! He's trying to seduce you."

"Well, it's not going to work!" I said. "He kissed me, I didn't kiss him." This wasn't completely true, since I had kissed Kevin back. But Gunnar and Em didn't need to know that.

"I need to tell Otto," I said.

"Maybe," Gunnar said.

"What do you mean?"

"What you need is to figure out what you really want. And you need to do it fast. It's not fair to lead Otto on. And if you decide you want to break up with him, then you can tell him. But even then, there's no reason to tell him about Kevin. That would just be mean." Gunnar paused for a second, then said, "For the record? I still can't believe I'm giving you relationship advice. Me! Gunnar! The former loser who couldn't get a girlfriend!"

"Uh, Gunnar?" I said. "Can we stay on topic here?" "And hel-lo!" Em said. "Girlfriend is sitting in the backseat! Could we also keep a little mystique in this relationship? Don't exactly want to be reminded how you couldn't get a girlfriend."

"Sorry," said Gunnar. To me, he added, "So anyway, 81 you need to pick between Kevin and Otto. And you should try to do it before Otto gets here." In spite of everything, Gunnar was right on-again. He had a definite future as an advice columnist.

But knowing what you have to do isn't the same thing at all as actually doing it.

That night, I IMed Otto.

Smuggler: Hey you.

OttoManEmpire: Hey you. I was just thinking about you!

Smuggler: I was just thinking about you too.

I had been thinking about him, but probably not in the way he was thinking about me.

OttoManEmpire: How's it going with your parents? Smuggler: The same. But now they know about you.

OttoManEmpire: They do?! And they're still okay with letting me come?

Smuggler: Well, they didn't exactly say no. But it didn't go over real well.

82.

This was the understatement of the century.

OttoManEmpire: Geez. How are you doing?

I had to think about this. How was I doing, now that things had calmed down a little? Smuggler: Can I be honest?

OttoManEmpire: Of course!

Smuggler: I feel horrible. Like I'm this terrible person. I know I'm not. Being gay isn't anything to be ashamed of. But they're my parents. Up till now, they've always been right about everything. This time, they're wrong, but it still FEELS like they're right. Like I've made this huge mistake. Like I have something to be ashamed of. But it's even worse than that, because they're not making me feel bad for anything I've DONE, but for just being who I am. For being the same person I've ALWAYS been. So now I feel twice as bad. First, because it feels like I've made this huge mistake, and second, because I know I've com83 pletely disappointed them. Wow, I thought. Where had all that come from? But it was all true. Somehow things were always a lot clearer whenever I talked to Otto.

Smuggler: Does all that make sense?

OttoManEmpire: YES!!! It makes PERFECT sense!! They're your parents! Why would you feel any other way?

That made me smile, to know that Otto had understood.

Smuggler: Do you think they'll ever change? Do you think they'll ever accept me? OttoManEmpire: I honestly don't know. But it does remind me of a cat we used to have. Smuggler: A cat?

OttoManEmpire: He used to sit on the mailbox in front of our house. He'd spend the whole day out there, watching the neighborhood. Our whole family used to make fun of him, laughing about why he spent so much time up there, what he could possibly see. Then one day, we 84 heard squealing tires in front of the house. We all went out to see what had happened. There's a greenbelt alongside our house, and a deer must have wandered out from the woods and been hit by a car.

Smuggler: Yuck.

OttoManEmpire: That deer had been killed right in front of our mailbox. The car that hit it hadn't stopped, must have just driven off. So our cat hopped down off the mailbox and climbed up on top of the dead deer. My whole family stood on our front porch, looking out at the cat standing on top of that huge deer. It looked exactly like the cat had taken down the deer. And so we all just started laughing. That old cat had been right to sit on that mailbox all those months, and our whole family had been dead wrong to make fun of him. Anyway, that cat reminds me of you.

Smuggler: I remind you of a cat on a mailbox? Why? OttoManEmpire: Because you're exactly where you should be, even if your parents can't see it yet. 85 Wow! I thought. Otto had really understood! I remembered again that moonlight night at camp on the lake in the rowboat. Was this guy a keeper or what?

Smuggler: Otto, I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. OttoManEmpire: Lol!

Smuggler: But there's one gigantic difference between me and that cat.

OttoManEmpire: What's that?

Smuggler: He was all alone on that mailbox. But I've got you. And I can't imagine being without you. I meant every word that I'd typed. I also knew then and there that I would pick Otto over Kevin any day. So there was no reason to tell Otto anything at all about Kevin, because nothing had changed between us, right? He was the one I wanted.

Otto and I kept typing, sending kissing and hugging emoticons back and forth and getting gushier by the second. But I should probably stop the scene here, because if I don't, you'll quit reading right now in complete disgust.

86.

The next day, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we had yet another day of extra work on Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies. We were back to one unit, all of us working with the real director again.

I saw Kevin, but to his credit, he kept his distance. I think he knew he had crossed some kind of line yesterday with his under-the-hood seduction. Maybe he was worried that if he tried to talk to me, I would give him the cold shoulder. It was a good call, because that was exactly what I had in mind.

The first shot of the day took place in one of the hallways. They had us half-zombie extras walking back and forth in front of this vending machine. Brad, played by Declan McDonnell, heads down the hall, talking to the only other person in the whole school who doesn't seem to be turning into a zombie-a girl named Christy, who wears gla.s.ses and slightly baggy clothing and is therefore supposed to be an outcast like Brad, but who is really played by this stunningly beautiful twenty-four-yearold actress. Brad and Christy stare at the half-zombies listing and groaning all around them, wondering if they're seeing things or what.

Still absorbed by the appearance of the other students, Brad and Christy stop at the vending machine. Brad puts some money in. But when he finally looks up to pick some87 thing from the machine, he sees that all the candy and chips have been replaced by b.l.o.o.d.y body parts-disembodied hands and feet and arms and organs. As he and Christy are gaping at the machine in horror, the captain of the football team, a half-zombie, walks up to it and slams the b.u.t.tons with one hand, causing a messy human forearm to fall into the dispenser. Then he walks away gnawing on the bone.

I still hadn't seen a script or anything, but I was finally starting to piece together the plot of Attack of the SoulSucking Brain Zombies. Declan McDonnell's character has arrived at this new high school, only to find all the kids strictly divided into impenetrable cliques, with everyone sort of lumbering through their days. Get it? Basically, they're already mindless zombies?