Foster asked again, “What’s up?”
“Calumny. What’s it mean?” she repeated.
“I dunno. Why?”
“I think it means a lie, a really bad one.” He and his toadies. If you find a nest of vipers, should you not root it out? “It just came to me, you know?” Her thoughts were whipping and thrashing in the storm in her head. We never gave them our favor!
Foster came and put a hand on her shoulder, looked into her eyes. “Gilla, who’s telling lies? You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
The warmth of her friend’s palm through the cloth of her blouse brought her back to herself. “Damn, it’s cold out here!”
Something funny happened to Foster’s face. He hesitated, then opened his arms to her. “Here,” he said.
Blinking with surprise, Gilla stepped into the hug. She stopped shivering. They stood there for a few seconds, Gilla wondering what, what? Should she put her arms around him too? Were they still just friends? Was he just warming her up because she was cold? Did he like her? Well of course he liked her, he hung out with her and Kashy during lunch period at school almost every day. Lots of the guys gave him the gears for that. But did he like her like that? Did she want him to? By your own choice, never by another’s. What was she supposed to do now? And what was with all these weird things she seemed to be thinking all of a sudden?
“Um, Gilla?”
“Yeah?”
“Could you get off my foot now?”
The laughter that bubbled from her tasted like cherries in the back of her throat. She stepped off poor Foster’s abused toes, leaned her head into his shoulder, giggling. “Oh, Foster. Why didn’t you just say I was hurting you?”
Foster was giggling too, his voice high with embarrassment. “I didn’t know what to say, or what was the right thing to do, or what.”
“You and me both.”
“I haven’t held too many girls like that before. I mean, only when I’m sure they want me to.”
Now Gilla backed up so she could look at him better. “Really? What about Tanya?”
He looked sheepish, and kind of sullen. “Yeah, I bet she’d like that. She’s nice, you know? Only…”
“Only what?” Gilla sat on the rail beside Foster.
“She just kinda sits there, like a sponge. I talk and I talk, and she just soaks it all up. She doesn’t say anything interesting back, she doesn’t tell me about anything she does, she just wants me to entertain her. Saniya was like that too, and Kristen,” he said, naming a couple of his short-lived school romances. “I like girls, you know? A lot. I just want one with a brain in her head. You and Kashy got more going on than that, right? More fun hanging with you guys.”
“So?” said Gilla, wondering what she was going to say.
“So what?”
“So what about Kashy?” She stumbled over her friend’s name, because what she was really thinking was, What about me? Did she even like Foster like that?
“Oh, look,” drawled a way too familiar voice. “It’s the faggot and the fat girl.”
Roger, Karl and Haygood had just come lumbering out of the house. Haygood snickered. Gilla froze.
“Oh, give it up, Roger,” Foster drawled back. He lounged against the railing again. “It’s so freaking tired. Every time you don’t know what to say—which, my friend, is often—you call somebody ‘faggot.’”
Haygood and Karl, their grins uncertain, glanced from Roger to Foster and back again. Foster got an evil smile, put a considering finger to his chin. “You ever hear of the pot calling the kettle black?”
At that, Karl and Haygood started to howl with laughter. Roger growled. That was the only way to describe the sound coming out of his mouth. Karl and Foster touched their fists together. “Good one, man. Good one,” Karl said. Foster grinned at him.
But Roger elbowed past Karl and stood chest to chest with Foster, his arms crossed in front of him, almost like he was afraid to let his body touch Foster’s. Roger glared at Foster, who stayed lounging calmly on the railing with a smirk on his face, looking Roger straight in the face. “And you know both our mothers ugly like duppy too, so you can’t come at me with that one either. You know that’s true, man; you know it.”
Before he had even finished speaking, Haygood and Karl had cracked up laughing. Then, to Gilla’s amazement, Roger’s lips started to twitch. He grinned, slapped Foster on the back, shook his hand. “A’ight man, a’ight,” said Roger. “You got me.” Foster grinned, mock-punched Roger on the shoulder.
“We’re going out back for a smoke,” Haygood said. “You coming, Foster?”
“Yeah man, yeah. Gilla, catch you later, okay?” The four of them slouched off together, Roger trailing a little. Just before they rounded the corner of the house, Roger looked back at Gilla. He pursed his lips together and smooched at her silently. Then they were gone. Gilla stood there, hugging herself, cold again.
She crept back inside. The lights were all off, except for a couple of candles over by the stereo. Someone had moved the dinner table with the food on it over there too, to clear the floor. A knot of people were dancing right in the centre of the living room. There was Clarissa, with Jim. Clarissa was jigging about, trying to look cool. Bet she didn’t even know she wasn’t on the beat. “Rock on,” Gilla whispered.
The television was on, the sound inaudible over the music. A few people huddled on the floor around it, watching a skinny blonde chick drop-kick bad guys. The blue light from the TV flickered over their faces like cold flame.
On the couches all around the room, couples were necking. Gilla tried to make out Kashy’s form, but it was too dark to really see if she was there. Gilla scouted the room out until she spied an empty lone chair. She went and perched on it, bobbed her head to the music and tapped her foot, pretending to have a good time.
She sighed. Sometimes she hated parties. She wanted to go and get a slice of that black rum cake. It was her favourite. But people would see her eating. She slouched protectively over her belly and stared across the room at the television. The programme had changed. Now it was an old-time movie or something, with guys and girls on a beach. Their bathing suits were in this ancient style, and the girls’ hair, my God. One of them wore hers in this weird puffy ’do. To Gilla’s eye, she looked a little chunky, too. How had she gotten a part in this movie? The actors started dancing on the beach, this bizarre kind of shimmy thing. The people watching the television started pointing and laughing. Gilla heard Hussain’s voice say, “No, don’t change the channel! That’s Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello!” Yeah, Hussain would know crap like that.