True Letters from a Fictional Life Read Online Free Page B

know what was wrong with him until he leaned into the stare and then slowly turned his head from Aaron to me.
    Feeling sort of sick, I looked at the ground and whispered, “Stop.”
    I should’ve handled it differently. I should’ve smacked him in the head or tripped him or something to at least acknowledge he was being funny. I knew he wasn’t actually suggesting that I date Aaron Foster, but it was like a bad dream coming true. We walked a few yards in silence.
    â€œHey,” Hawken whispered. “I was only kidding.”
    In ninth grade when Aaron arrived in our school, fresh from California, he was always scribbling in his own notebook, usually with a purple gel pen, making a show of being a writer. He hung out with this girl Lisa Schultz, who’s friends with Theresa. She’s pretty cool most of the time, but she wears combat boots and somehow she got a tattoo on her bicep when she was fifteen. She dates boys, which confuses them. Anyway, Aaron and Lisa would sit around writing together. He would stare at my friends and me for a bit, eyes narrowed, then go back to scribbling. There was another Aaron in our class back then, Aaron Gillespie, so to distinguish between the two, Aaron Foster was quickly dubbed “Gay Aaron.”
    That nickname died out eventually, but I still never went out of my way to talk to him. The few times I had tospeak to him, I looked over my shoulder, wondering who was watching.
    He still hadn’t looked back at us when he reached our classroom, opened the door, and disappeared inside. I glanced back down the hall, but the only other people were way at the other end, so they couldn’t have witnessed the exchange between Hawken and me. But who knew? Maybe some kid had been stuffed in a locker during lunch and had observed it all through the vents.
    There were two empty seats left when we got into class: one on either side of Aaron Foster. Hawken and I settled in to his left and right. We still had a couple of minutes before class began, and Mr. Breyer wasn’t even in the room yet, so Hawken scooted his chair next to Aaron, leaned across his desk, and demanded, “Hey, you two. What happens in the play? For real. He might give us a reading quiz. I don’t want to fail again.”
    Aaron laughed politely and drew little circles on the cover of his notebook. He wasn’t used to being included in our conversations, though it wasn’t all our fault. Soon after he’d arrived, he’d called Hawken a retard. I remember Hawken looking as though Aaron had spat in his face, but before he could say anything in response, Derek pinned Aaron to a locker and whispered a threat that began Listen, you little fairy and then dropped so low I couldn’t hear the rest. Meanwhile, I had turned to Hawken and offered this heartfelt comfort: “You are not what he just said.” I’m sure that reassurancemade him feel all better.
    That was at the end of ninth grade, when we were all smaller and stupider. If we held grudges for all the idiotic things we said and did as freshmen and sophomores, the hallways would be silent. No one would be talking to anyone else. Hawken certainly wouldn’t be talking to Derek or me. A few months before we stuck up for him against Aaron, the two of us had been demolishing a bag of tortilla chips in my kitchen. My mom came in and asked how Hawken was doing.
    â€œGood,” I said with a mouthful of chips. “Hawken’s just Hawken.”
    â€œHe doesn’t seem upset in class?” she asked. “He’s not getting teased?”
    â€œTim Hawken?” Derek asked. “No. Of course not.”
    â€œHis mom says he’s having a hard time. Some kids have been giving him trouble because he goes for help with reading.”
    Derek and I glanced at each other. He grimaced. We often joked with Hawken that his reading problems made him special. “You’re just a special kid,” we’d