Geography Club by Brent Hartinger

know how we crazy gay people did our dating thing either, but that was a whole other story.)
    “Oh, there’s more good news!” Gunnar said, but I already knew what it was: Trish wanted to go out with me again too.
    “What?” I said.
    “Trish wants to go out with you again too,” Gunnar said. “Kimberly thought we could double again.” He tried to make this sound exciting, but I could hear the worry in his voice, the fear that I was going to put up another big fuss about going out with Trish, just like I had the first time. In other words, on some level, I think even Gunnar knew he was just being used.
    “Well?” Gunnar said.
    I mustered up the biggest grin I could for my friend. “That sounds great. I’d love to take Trish out again!”
    It was just one more little date. How bad could it be?
     
     
    The next day before school, I met Min by her locker and told her that I had yet another date with Trish Baskin. Without making myself sound too noble, I also told her why.
    She smiled in an admiring kind of way. Then she said, “You’re a really nice guy. You know that, Russel? You’re a thoroughly decent guy.”
    I blushed a little. Even more than making Min laugh, I liked making her think I was decent. I guess because I thought she was decent too.
    I stepped closer to her in the hallway and lowered my voice. “So how’s it going? With Terese, I mean.”
    She didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, which I thought was a little weird. She said, “What do you mean?”
    “Well,” I said, “last week in the park you sounded pretty bummed.”
    “Oh, that.” She rolled her eyes. “That was just me being stupid.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. We’ve gotten together a couple times since then. Nothing’s changed. Or if it has, it’s better.”
    “Really?”
    She nodded. This was no brave face she was putting on. She was telling the truth.
    “Well, that’s great!” I said.
    I thought about all that had happened in the last day or so. Min and Terese were back to being good. It turned out no one had spilled the beans about the Geography Club. And Kevin wanted me to join the baseball team. True, I was gay and I was dating a girl—and one I didn’t particularly like at that. But I was doing it for a friend, so it didn’t seem like such a whopping big deal.
    The fact is, things were finally going right, and I couldn’t imagine anything that could possibly change that.
     
     
    “That’s it, Middlebrook!” Kevin Land said to me. “Now I’m gonna mop the floor with your face!”
    It was that afternoon at the Tuesday meeting of the Geography Club and we were playing baseball in Kephart’s classroom. We were using a Ping-Pong ball for a ball and an eraser for a bat. Kevin was pitching, and I was up to bat. It was Kevin and Terese against Ike and Min and me.
    “Hey, batter, batter!” Terese intoned. “Hey, batter, batter!”
    Kevin pitched, and I swung. There was a very satisfying thwap , and the ball went flying up over the desks.
    “Run!” Min shouted to me. “Run!”
    I didn’t need to be told. I was already off and running for first base, which happened to be a desk in the front row of the classroom.
    “Get it, get it!” Kevin shouted to Terese. “Throw it here!” But it was clacking wildly under the desks in the back of the room, and she was having a hard time pinning it down.
    “Go!” Min said to me. “Keep going!”
    When I reached first, Terese was still fumbling for the ball, so I took off for second base—another desk.
    “Come on!” Ike shouted. “Bring it home!”
    Soon I was rounding third, and there was still no Ping-Pong ball in sight.
    “Hurry!” Kevin yelled to Terese. “Hurry!”
    “I got it!” Terese said, standing bolt upright. She threw it to Kevin, who snatched it from the air and rushed to meet me at home plate. He crashed into me with the force of a meteor—a meteor with biceps and a six-pack!
    “Out!” Kevin said, his arms wrapped tightly around