I Understand Now

My first meeting with him wasn't pleasant.

The boy plopped himself in the desk behind me and consequently, as he was carrying everything he could've possibly owned in one arm, lost his grip in his downward motion, and in a whirl of papers and notebooks, dropped his textbook on the floor. The slap of the hard-book cover on the wooden floor could've been heard in China. Everyone turned to look at him. The boy didn't so much as blush; he just picked it up off the floor and plunked the textbook back on his desk. Then he gathered the strewn-about papers on the floor.

I turned back to face the front of the classroom and waited for the class to start.

Not so much a second later I felt a jab in the center of my back. "Hey. Hey, mister."

I looked around, slightly irritated. The boy was pointing chewed-up pencil at me. "This is multivariable calculus, right?"

His voice was low and husky. I said, "Yeah, this is it," and I turned back around.

He jabbed me again. "What's your name?"

"Mason." I didn't look at him.

"Are you gay?"

"Excuse me?" I jerked my head back to him. His green eyes were looking at me and that frayed pencil was still in his hand. I almost wanted to take it and stab him in the neck.

"You're wearing a scarf," he said. "Usually people who wear scarves are gay."

"You chew on your pencil," I said. I shifted back into my forward position. "Usually people who chew on their pencils are tweakers."

But I only heard his gravelly laugh from behind me. "Yeah, Mason, I think you're gay."