Autoboyography
Page 11

Hailey is a blur of black pajamas, bird’s nest dyed black hair, and scowl as she shuffles into the room. “Why are you guys so loud?”
It’s funny that she’s chosen the quietest moment to enter with this complaint.
“This is the sound of high-functioning humans,” I tell her. She punches me in the chest and tries to talk Mom into giving her some coffee. As expected, Mom refuses and offers her orange juice.
“Coffee stunts your growth,” I tell my sister.
“Is that why your penis is so—”
“Tanner is headed out to work on an assignment,” Dad interrupts pointedly. “With a person named Sebastian.”
“Yeah, the guy he likes,” Hailey tells him. Mom’s head whips over to me.
My insides turn into an immediate tangle of panic. “I do not, Hailey.”
She gives me a screamingly skeptical look. “Hokay.”
Dad leans in, more awake now. “Likes as in likes?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Likes as in he’s a nice person who can help me get an A. He’s just my TA.”
Dad gives me a wide smile, his enthusiastic reminder that, even if I’m not attracted to the guy we’re currently discussing, He’s Okay With My Sexuality. The only thing missing in this moment is the bumper sticker.
Hailey sets her glass of juice down on the counter with a heavy thud. “He’s just your TA who Autumn describes as ‘super-hot’ and you describe as a ‘splotchy boy blusher.’”
Mom steps in. “But he’s only helping you with your book, right?”
I nod. “Right.”
Anyone watching this exchange might think my mother is getting worked up about the fact that he’s a boy, but no. It’s that he’s Mormon.
“Okay,” she says, like we’ve just cemented a deal. “Good.”
Fire ignites in my stomach at the concern in her voice, burning a hole through me. I swipe Hailey’s glass, downing her OJ, extinguishing the flames. She looks to Mom for justice, but Mom and Dad are sharing a moment of silent parent communication.
“I’m curious whether it’s possible for a super-LDS kid and a super non-LDS kid to be friends,” I tell them.
“So, you’re viewing this as a sort of experiment?” Dad asks warily.
“Yeah. Kinda.”
“Okay, but don’t toy with him,” Mom says.
I groan. This is getting tedious. “You guys.” I walk across the room to grab my backpack. “It’s for school. We’re just going over my outline.”
WE’RE JUST GOING OVER MY OUTLINE.
WE’RE JUST GOING OVER MY OUTLINE.
WE’RE JUST GOING OVER MY OUTLINE.
I write it about seventeen times in my notebook while I wait for Sebastian to show up where we agreed to meet: in the writer’s alcove at the Provo City Library.
When he scribbled down his e-mail address in perfect penmanship, I’m sure he expected me to ask that we meet at the Shake Shack—not Starbucks, by God—and go over my outline. But the idea of sitting in public with him where anyone from school could see felt too exposed. I hate to admit it, but what if someone saw me and thought I was converting? What if someone saw him and wondered what he was doing with the non-LDS kid? What if it was Soccer Dave, and he noticed my eyes following Sebastian in class, and the bishop asked around with some contacts in Palo Alto who told him I was queer, and he told Sebastian, and Sebastian told everyone?
I’m definitely overthinking this.
WE’RE JUST GOING OVER MY OUTLINE.
WE’RE JUST GOING OVER MY OUTLINE.
WE’RE JUST GOING OVER MY OUTLINE.
Footsteps shuffle up the stairs behind where I’m sitting, and I have just enough time to stand up and knock my notebook onto the floor before Sebastian is there, looking like a Patagonia ad in a blue puffy jacket, black chinos, and Merrells.
He smiles. His face is pink from the cold, but it punches me in the chest how much I like to look at him.
This is so, so bad.
“Hey,” he says, just slightly out of breath. “Sorry I’m a couple minutes late. My sister got this giant Barbie house for her birthday, and I had to help my dad put it together before I took off. There were, like, a million pieces to that thing.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, starting to reach my hand out to shake his, before pulling it back in because what the hell am I doing?
Sebastian notices, extending his hand before pulling it back too.
“Ignore that,” I say.
He laughs, confused but clearly amused. “It’s like your first day with a new arm.”
Oh my God, this is terrible. We’re just two dudes meeting to study. Bros. Bros don’t get nervous. Be a bro, Tanner. “Thanks for meeting me.”
He nods and bends to pick up my notebook. I grab it before he can read the lines and lines of me calming myself down about what we’re doing here, but I can’t tell whether I was successful. He passes it off, avoiding my eyes, and instead looks past me into the empty room.
“We’re in here?” he asks.
I nod, and he follows me deeper into the room, bending to look out the window. Snow clouds hover over the Wasatch Mountains in a thick fog, like ghosts looming over our quiet city.
“You know what’s weird?” he says, without turning to me.
I try to ignore the way the light coming in the window catches the side of his face. “What’s that?”
“I’ve never been up here. I’ve been to the stacks, but I’ve never actually walked around the library.”
On the tip of my tongue is a barb: That’s because everything you do outside of school takes place at church. But I swallow the instinct down. He’s here helping me.
“How old is your sister?” I ask.
Blinking back to me, he smiles again. He wears his smile so easily, so constantly. “The one with the Barbie house?”
“Yeah.”
“Faith is ten.” He takes a step toward me, and another, and in an unfamiliar voice my heart is screaming YES, COME HERE, but then I realize that he’s indicating we should move to the table, start working.
Be a bro, Tanner.
I turn, and we settle at the table I got here early to claim—though we could have any. There is no one else at the library at nine on a Saturday morning.
His chair drags across the wood floor dissonantly, and he laughs, apologizing under his breath. With him so close to me, I get another drag of his smell, and it feels a little like getting high.
“You have other siblings though, right?”
He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, and I’m tempted to explain my question—I wasn’t making a snarky assumption about the size of LDS families; Hailey and Lizzy are in class together. “My other sister is fifteen. Lizzy,” he says. “And then I have a brother, Aaron, who is thirteen going on twenty-three.”
I laugh too politely at this. Inside, I am a yarn ball of nerves, and I don’t even know why. “Lizzy goes to Provo High, right?”
He nods. “Sophomore.”
I’ve seen her around school, and Hailey wasn’t wrong: Lizzy is an eternal smiler, often found helping the janitorial staff during lunch break. She seems so full of joy she nearly vibrates. “She seems nice.”
“She is. Faith is a cutie too. Aaron is . . . well, he likes to push limits. He’s a good kid.”
I nod, Tanner Scott, awkward meathead to the end of time. Sebastian turns to look at me; I can almost sense his smile. “Do you have brothers or sisters?” he asks.