"And I've missed you like a loose eyeball misses its socket!"

"Ewww!" I said, laughing. "Well, I've missed you like the surface of Mars misses an atmosphere!"

100 "And I've missed you like a disemboweled body misses its, well, bowels!"

We were both laughing so hard now we could barely talk.

I felt so good, like I was completely weightless, and Otto and I were bobbing around giddily up among the clouds. All the stuff with my parents, and Kevin, it just no longer existed. I suddenly thought about what Declan McDonnell had said about high school being about the future. That's what it felt like right then. But barreling into the future all the time, not to mention bobbing around weightless, is very disorienting.

I lost my balance for a second and b.u.mped up against Otto.

The moment I touched him, I had the strangest sensation. You know how they say that people sometimes live in their head? At that moment, it was like I was living in my skin. That was the only part of me that existed. My skin had never felt so sensitive before, every inch of it, tingling and aware. It was different from the electricity that had pa.s.sed between Kevin and me when he'd been working on his dead battery. That had definitely gotten my attention, but this felt deeper somehow, not merely physical.

Otto was clearly experiencing all this too. "Wow!" he said, eyes wide. "What was that ?"

"I don't know," I said.

I lifted the palm of my hand, and Otto pressed his 101 against mine. I wasn't just feeling my actual skin anymore. Before that moment, I hadn't believed in auras or spirits or even souls in the literal sense, but I believed in them now. I could actually feel mine, like a second skin, and maybe even more alive. I could feel Otto's too, pressing up against me, warm and soothing.

I leaned forward to kiss him. When his tongue slipped inside my mouth, I gasped. His soul was suddenly inside mine too, something I had never felt before.

I wanted to stay that way forever, but Otto broke the kiss far too soon.

"Wait," he said. "What's that smell?"

"Huh?" I said, disoriented again, missing his soul and his tongue.

"It smells like a swamp. Methane or something."

I looked around and suddenly realized where we were. We'd walked to the park with the stinky picnic gazebo, the place where I'd met Kevin the first time, and the week earlier as well. Why had I brought Otto here? I hadn't intended to. We'd just been walking aimlessly. But my skin wasn't aware and tingly anymore. And remember when I said I felt all weightless and giddy? I felt the pull of gravity again. I suddenly wanted more than anything to get away from this place.

102 "What is it?" Otto said, sensing the change in me.

"Nothing," I said, stepping away. "Let's just keep walking, okay?" The next day, Thursday, I had Thanksgiving with my parents (and some relatives) early in the afternoon, but I barely ate. I also pretended to be all miffed and sullen (which wasn't hard). So when I said "I'm going over to Gunnar's," my parents were perfectly happy to see me go.

When I got to Gunnar's house, he and his family and Otto were just starting dinner. Min and Em had also stopped by. Gunnar's mom put us all at this table by ourselves in the kitchen, along with Gunnar's bespectacled, eleven-year-old cousin Myron. For the first time in my life, I didn't mind being at the "kiddies' table." Even with Myron there, it was like my friends and I were having our own Thanksgiving meal, complete with all the fixings. We even had our own little turkey, but I was sitting facing the hollowed-out end where the stuffing had been, so it felt a little like I was being mooned.

"Gunnar," I said, dishing up the cranberry corn bread stuffing, "this is great! Thanks for having us."

"Thank my mom," he said. "All I did was make the papier-mche cornucopia out on the grown-ups' table. And that was back in the sixth grade!" 103 We all laughed and started chowing down. The turkey was moist, the broccoli crunched, and the gravy had a creamy rosemary flavor.

But as we ate, we talked-about everything under the sun.

For example, I told everyone an idea I'd had a few months before, when I was weeding in our yard.

"There should be something called National Dandelion Day," I said. "On one day, every person in the world goes out and digs up all the dandelions in his yard at the very same time. Then there'd be no dandelions to go to seed and send their little evil parachutes out into the world. It would solve the dandelion problem forever. No one would ever have to weed again! a.s.suming everyone got the roots. You have to get all the root, or the d.a.m.n thing grows back."

"It wouldn't work," Min said.

"Why not?" Gunnar asked. "I'd be into it."

"Yeah," said Myron, Gunnar's eleven-year-old cousin. "Why not?"

"Well," Min said, "there'd be plenty of jacka.s.ses who wouldn't do it. You know, all the idiots who rant and rave about how they don't want anyone telling them what to do with 'their' land? So they wouldn't weed their yards. And 104 they'd sit on their porches with their shotguns to make sure no one else weeded their yards either. So their dandelions would keep growing, and then they'd go to seed, and they'd screw the whole thing up."

"Min's right," Em said. "Some people have no idea about the common good. They b.i.t.c.h about low-flow toilets and they go out and buy a huge, expensive SUV and then flip out about the three-cent gas tax that's needed to pay for all the pollution and congestion they're causing. It's like they think they're the only people in the world."

"I used the bathroom on the plane over here," Otto said. "I went in right after this hotshot businessman-type. But when I got in there, I saw he'd peed all over the toilet seat. It was completely disgusting. He couldn't even have bothered lifting the seat. It never occurred to him that women were going to use that thing, and old and disabled people who might not be able to bend down and clean it first. Or maybe he just didn't care."

"They need a new sign in airplane bathrooms," Gunnar said. "Rather than the one that says 'As a courtesy to the next pa.s.senger, please wipe down the basin after each use.' It should say 'As a courtesy to the next pa.s.senger, please don't p.i.s.s all over the d.a.m.n bathroom!'"

It was funny, and everyone laughed except me. I wasn't sure why I didn't. 105 We kept eating, and eventually we moved on to talking about which was the world's best amus.e.m.e.nt park ride.

"Oh, Tower of Terror!" Gunnar said. "At Disney World. No contest. There are higher drop rides, but none of them have Tower of Terror's atmosphere."

"I like the Haunted Mansion," Em said.

"Oh, yes," said Min. "That's a cla.s.sic."

"It doesn't have as many of those cheesy animatronic robots, like Pirates of the Caribbean," Em said. "So it seems less dated. Plus it has a better sense of humor."

"But you've got to love those fireflies on Pirates of the Caribbean," Min said.

"Indiana Jones is good," said Otto, playing footsie with me under the table. "I used to like those simulator rides, like Body War or Star Tours. But they just don't hold up. You ride 'em once, and then it just feels like you're being jerked around in the back of a truck."

"There's this ride called Poseidon's Fury?" said Gunnar's cousin Myron. "At Islands of Adventure in Orlando. You go into this temple, then down into the city of Atlantis. And at the end, they turn this huge room into a tiny room really, really fast! It is so cool!"

"Tower of Terror!" Gunnar repeated. "It's clearly the 106 best! I can't believe you guys can't see that."

Weirdly, this talk of amus.e.m.e.nt park rides was depressing me. I wasn't sure why, because ordinarily I loved amus.e.m.e.nt park rides. I reached for the relish tray, but the baby corn was all gone, and that made me sad too.

Next we talked about gay teen movies.

"They all suck," Otto said.

"Except for Beautiful Thing," Em added.

And that was pretty much all we had to say on that topic! Finally, we even had sort of a Thanksgiving-esque conversation about everything that had happened to all of us lately, and what we were grateful for.

"It's been an amazing year," Min said reflectively. "Think about it all. This time last year, we hadn't even started the Geography Club."

"And I hadn't met Em," Gunnar said, smiling at her. "And I hadn't met Russel," said Otto.

"You'll meet someone too," I said to Min, worried she might feel left out not having someone in her life.

"Uh-huh," she said, taking a big drink of her ice water. Suddenly Gunnar said, "I don't want this to end."

Em looked around the tabletop. "Too late," she said drolly. She was right. Like six Very Hungry Caterpillars, we'd chomped our way through every little morsel of food. The turkey, of course, had been picked completely clean.

"I don't mean dinner," Gunnar said. "I mean this." He 107 nodded around the table. "Us. I really like things the way they are right now. I don't want to just graduate from college, get a job, and buy a house in the suburbs." He glanced out toward the dining room. The conversation of the adults sounded like an otherworldly moan. Gunnar softened his voice. "I look at my parents' lives, at how boring they are. They don't have friends-they have dinner party guests! I don't want to ever be like them. Do you think we have to?"

"No!" said Myron. We all looked at him. "We can have whatever lives we want. If people have boring lives, it's because they choose to have boring lives. If their friends are stupid, it's because they choose stupid friends. We don't have to end up like our parents. We don't."

Myron was only eleven years old, but he was surprisingly precocious. No one could have said it better.

And it was right then that I realized why I was suddenly feeling so sad. It wasn't the conversation we'd been having, not even this latest, serious part about growing up and turning boring. It was because right then, at that table at least, my life was perfect. I had told Declan McDonnell the truth about high school-that I hated it. But that was just the school part. The rest of my life was pretty amazing. And right then, I was with a guy I loved and who loved me, and 108 friends I loved and who loved me too. Like that night on the lake in the rowboat with Otto, life at that moment was absolutely perfect. But it wasn't going to stay perfect for long. For one thing, I'd have to go home to parents who I now knew didn't love me the way I was, or accept me unconditionally. And as for the guy I loved, he was about to become MIA. On Sat.u.r.day, forty-four hours from right then, Otto had to go home. Who knew when I'd see him again? And that was just about the saddest thing imaginable.

Yes, yes, it was unbelievably stupid to be sad about something that hadn't even happened yet, to be ruining the brief time we did have together. But I couldn't help it. I felt like I was going to cry. I couldn't imagine going back to how I'd been before I'd come out, before we'd created the Geography Club. It's one thing to be sad that you don't have the one thing you desperately want. It might be even worse to get what you want for a little while, only to have it taken away from you.

"Let's make a vow," Em said. "Let's promise each other right here and now that we won't ever turn boring. And if we do, we give the others permission to come make us do something completely crazy!"

We all laughed, even me, because now it would have been obvious if I hadn't. And then we all agreed to Em's pledge. 109 Afterward, we talked and laughed some more, and Otto kept playing footsie with me under the table. I tried to pretend I was having the same good time that everyone else was having. But inside, I felt like that turkey carca.s.s in the middle of the table-with a big hole right in the middle of my chest.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The next day, Friday of Thanksgiving vacation, we all went back to work as extras on Attack of the Soul-Sucking 110 Brain Zombies. Otto joined us, bringing the permission form signed by his parents.

"Can I ask a question?" Otto asked Gunnar, Em, and me that morning on the way to the school.

"Sure," I said.

"What's a brain zombie?"

Em and I burst into laughter.

"No one knows!" I said.

"We still haven't figured that out," Em said. "It hasn't come up in any of the scenes we've been in." This time, Gunnar didn't say a word, just sulked a little. That morning we all became full-fledged zombies for the very first time, with costuming and makeup and everything. There were about twenty-five zombie extras that day, but only six makeup artists, so they were defi nitely working overtime.

I was one of the last people out of makeup. Wardrobe had dressed me in a T-shirt and white long-sleeved shirt, all shredded and b.l.o.o.d.y, and geeky, computer-nerd pants covered with some kind of fake dirt that smelled like chalk dust. Then they'd plastered my face with a base of green makeup (more olive, really) and used something called spirit gum to paste these fake scabs and boils all over my cheeks and forehead. And they'd oiled my hair and messed it up again, and given me this set of rotting, yellow teeth, which I could slip in and out 111 of my mouth, but which made it so I could still talk. Finally, they'd glued half of this plastic calculator to me, so it looked like someone had jammed it into the side of my head.

In short, I looked like a walking, slowly rotting corpse. True, they'd pegged me for a computer nerd (again), but I guess I couldn't have everything.

The first shot took place right outside the front doors of the school. The school bell was supposed to ring, and then all we zombie-students were to come staggering out. The doors had been rigged to burst off their hinges so it looked like we were doing it.

Kevin was there, waiting with the other extras. He'd been made up as a full zombie now too. They'd put him in a torn, moldy-looking letterman's jacket, and he carried a blood-spattered baseball bat (which was appropriate, given that he did play baseball). His makeup was like mine, except they'd also made it look like he'd had his neck ripped open and blood had dripped down onto his shirt.

"You look great," I said, before I could stop myself. "How'd they do that to your neck?"

He stared at me with a completely straight face. "Whaddaya mean? Do what? Hey, what's taking them so long with the makeup anyway? Aren't you getting tired of 112 waiting?"

I smiled. "Hey, I see you got some new clothes," he went on. "A big improvement over what you usually wear."

"Thanks," I said. "Thanks a lot." It was still weird to see Kevin in full zombie makeup, but what was interesting was how quickly I got used to it.

He narrowed his eyes. "Something else looks different about you. You get a new haircut? And your teeth. You get them whitened or something?"

I laughed. Kevin could be funny. I glanced around for the guy who had been hitting on him that Sunday, but I didn't see him anywhere.

Kevin tilted his head to one side and made to scratch his torn-up throat. "Man, my neck is itching. I think I have a rash or something. You see anything?"

At that, I admit I cracked up. It felt so good just to laugh. I still hadn't shaken that horrible emptiness I'd felt at Thanksgiving dinner the night before, and I guess I was desperate to forget all that.

Then I happened to look to one side. Otto was done with his makeup now too, and he'd joined us on the set.

He was looking right at Kevin and me.

They'd made Otto a zombie-jock too, like Kevin, except he was wearing a cracked and b.l.o.o.d.y football helmet and car113 rying a deflated pigskin. They'd turned his real scar into a fake injury, so it looked like half his face was falling off. "Wow, you look great," I said when Otto joined Kevin and me.

"Yeah!" Kevin said. "That scar looks really real!"

"It is real," I said. "Otto's a burn survivor."

"Really?" Kevin said, not missing a beat. "Hey, that's great!" I wasn't sure if Kevin was talking about the fact that Otto had survived the burn, or that he'd been willing to come and be an extra in a horror film. But either way, I was impressed that he hadn't gotten all fl.u.s.tered.

"Thanks," Otto said.

"Kevin?" I said. "This is my boyfriend, Otto."

"Oh," Kevin said, but he didn't say anything else. Now he was fl.u.s.tered. That was ironic.

This is stupid, I thought. I should just say something. But I couldn't think of anything to say. I guess I was fl.u.s.tered too. Otto didn't say anything either. It was a three-way fl.u.s.ter.

We just stood there with no one saying anything. How long was this awkward silence going to continue? It occurred to me that I could tell Otto that Kevin had once been my boyfriend too, but if anything could have made that moment even more awkward, that was probably it.

114 It was the movie director who finally broke the inter minable silence. "Okay!" he called. "Let's have a rehearsal!" Thank G.o.d! I thought. It was like Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia had breathed on us, turning us from stone into real people again.

"Okay," the director said. "You're full zombies now, right?

Let's see you act like them. Stiff legs, arms outstretched, the works! We'll be rerecording the zombies in the studio, but growl anyway-it'll help you get into character." We all moved into position.

"Rolling!" the director said, even though we knew it was just a rehearsal. "And action!"

The fake school bell sounded. Together, we zombies shambled forward, groaning and lurching. At the first touch of the lead zombies, the front doors exploded off their hinges, flying off to the sides.

As we were crowding out onto the steps, one of the zombie-jocks slammed against me with his shoulder, groaning gleefully.

"And . . . cut!" said the director.

Otto immediately turned to the "jock" who had knocked against me.

"What was that about?" Otto asked.

"Huh?" the jock said.

"You almost flattened my friend!" 115 "We're supposed to," the guy said defensively. "The director told the jocks to pick on the nerds."

"When?" Otto asked. "I didn't hear him say that."